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EDITED BY 



JOHN T. MORSE, JR. 



American Statesmen 



MARTIN YAN BUREN 



BY 



EDWAED M: SHEPAKD 




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BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTOX MIFFLIN COMPANY 



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COPYRIGHT, iSSS, BY EDWARD M. SHEPARD 

. COPYRIGHT, 1S99, BY EDWARD M. SHEPARD 

AND HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 

COPYRIGHT, I916, BY CHARLES S. SHEPARD, AGNES S. HEWITT, 

EDWARD S. HEWITT, AND RUSSELL C. LEFFINGWELL 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 






CAM BK I DOE . MASSACHUSETTS 
PRINTED IN THE U.S. A 



PEEFACE TO THE EEVISED EDITION 

Since 1888, when this Life was originally 
published, the history of American Politics has 
been greatly enriched. The painstaking and can- 
did labors of Mr. Fiske, Mr. Adams, Mr. Rhodes, 
and others have gone far to render unnecessary the 
caveat I then entered against the unfairness, or at 
least the narrowness, of the temper with which Van 
Buren, or the school to which he belonged, had thus 
far been treated in American literature, and which 
had prejudicially misled me before I began my 
work. Such a caveat is no longer necessary. 
Even now, when the political creed of which Jef- 
ferson, Van Buren, and Tilden have been chief 
apostles in our land, seems to suffer some degree 
of eclipse, —^ only temporary, it may well be be- 
lieved, but nevertheless real, — those who, like 
myself, have undertaken to present the careers of 
great Americans who held this faith need not fear 
injustice or prejudice in the field of American lit- 
erature. 

In this revised edition I have made a few cor- 
rections and added a few notes ; but the generous 



vi PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION 

treatment which has been given to the book has 
confirmed my belief that historic truth requires no 
material change. 

A passage from the diary of Charles Jared 
IngersoU (Life by William M. Meigs, 1897) 
tempts me, in this most conspicuous place of the 
book, to emphasize my observation upon one injus- 
tice often done to Van Buren. Keferring, on May 
6, 1844, to his letter, then just published, against 
the annexation of Texas, Mr. Ingersoll declared 
that, in view of the fact that nearly all of Van 
Buren's admirers and most of the Democratic press 
were committed to the annexation. Van Buren had 
committed a great blunder and become /e^o cZe se. 
The assumption here is that Van Buren was a poli- 
tician of the type so painfully familiar to us, whose 
sole and conscienceless effort is to find out what is 
to be popular for the time, in order, for their own 
profit, to take that side. That Van Buren was 
politic there can be no doubt. But he was politic 
after the fashion of a statesman and not of a dema- 
o-offue. He disliked to commit himself upon issues 
which had not been fully discussed, which were not 
ripe for practical solution by popular vote, and 
which did not yet need to be decided. Mr. Inger- 
soll should have known that the direct and simple 
explanation was the true one, — that Van Buren 
kuQw the risk and meant to take it. His letter 



PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION vii 

against the annexation of Texas, written when he 
knew that it would probably defeat him for the 
presidency, was but one of several acts performed 
by him at critical periods, wherein he deliberately 
took what seemed the unpopular side in order to 
be true to his sense o:: political and patriotic duty. 
The crucial tests of this kind through which he 
successfully passed must, beyond any doubt, put 
him in the very first rank of those American 
statesmen who have had the rare union of politi- 
cal foresight and moral courage. 

EDWARD M. SHEPARD. 
January, 1899. 



CONTENTS 

CHAP. pjig, 

I. American Politics when Van Buken's Cabeer 

BEGAN. — Jefferson's Influence . . . 1 
11. Early Years. — Professional Life . . 14 

III. State Senator: Attorney-General: Member 

OF THE Constitutional Convention . . 38 

IV. United States Senator. — Reestablishment of 

Parties. — Party Leadership . . . 88 

V. Democratic Victory in 1828. — Governor . 153 
VI. Secretary of State. — Definite Formation of 

the Democratic Creed 177 

VII. Minister to England. — Vice-President. — 

Election to the Presidency .... 223 

VIII. Crisis of 1837 282 

IX. President. — Sub-Treasury Bill . . . 325 

X. President. — Canadian Insurrection. — Texas. 

— Seminole War. — Defeat for Reelection 350 
XI. Ex -President. — Slavery. — Texas Annexation. 

— Defeat by the South. — Free Soil Cam- 
paign. — Last Years 398 

XII. Van Buren's Character and Place in History 449 
Index .... 469 



MAETIN VAN BUREN 



CHAPTER I 

AMERICAN POLITICS WHEN TAN BUREN'S CAREER 

BEGAN. — Jefferson's influence 

It sometimes happened during the anxious years 
when the terrors of civil war, though still smoul- 
dering, were nearly aflame, that on Wall Street or 
Nassau Street, busy men of New York saw Martin 
Van Buren and his son walking arm in arm. 
" Prince John," tall, striking in appearance, his 
hair divided at the middle in a fashion then novel 
for Americans, was in the prime of life, resolute 
and aggressive in bearing. His father was a white- 
haired, bright-eyed old man, erect but short in 
figure, of precise though easy and kindly polite- 
ness, and with a touch of deference in his manner. 
His presence did not peremptorily command the 
attention of strangers ; but to those who looked at- 
tentively there was plain distinction in the refined 
and venerable face. Passers-by might well turn 
back to see more of the two men thus affection- 
ately and picturesquely together. For they were 



2 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

famous characters, — the one in the newer, the 
other in the older politics of America. John Van 
Buren, fresh from his Free Soil battle and the tus- 
sles of the Hards and Softs, was striving, as a 
Democrat, to serve the cause of the Union, though 
conscious that he rested under the suspicion of the 
party to whose service, its divisions in New York 
now seemingly ended, he had reluctantly returned. 
But he still faced the slave power with an inde- 
pendence only partially abated before the exi- 
gencies of party loyalty. The ex-President, de- 
finitely withdrawn from the same Free Soil battle, 
a strusfS'le into which he had entered when the 
years were already heavy upon him, had survived 
to be once more a worthy in the Democratic party, 
again to receive its formal veneration, but never 
asrain its old affection. In their timid manoeuvres 
with slavery it was perhaps with the least possible 
awkwardness that the northern Democrats sought 
to treat him as a great Democratic leader ; but 
they did not let it be forgotten that the leader 
was forever retired from leadership. While the 
younger man was in the thick of political encoun- 
ters which the party carried on in blind futility, 
the okWr man was hardly more than an historical 
personage. He was no longer, his friends strove 
to think, the schismatic candidate of 1848, but 
rather the ally and friend of Jackson, or, better 
still and further away, the disciple of Jefferson. 

For, more than any other American, Martin Van 
Buren had succeeded to the preaching of Jeffer- 



AMERICAN POLITICS 3 

son's political doctrines, and to his political power 
as well, that curious and potent mingling of phi- 
losophy, statesmanship, and electioneering. The 
Whio-s' distrust towards Van Buren was still bit- 
ter; the hot anger of his own party over the blow 
he had dealt in 1848 was still far from subsided ; 
the gratitude of most Free Soil men had completely 
disappeared with his apparent acquiescence in the 
politics of Pierce and Buchanan. Save in a nar- 
row circle of anti-slavery Democrats, Van Buren, 
in these last days of his, was judged at best with 
coldness, and most commonly with dislike or even 
contempt. Not much of any other temper has yet 
gone into political history ; its writers have fre- 
quently been content to accept the harshness of 
partisan opinion, or even the scurrility and men- 
dacity visited upon him during "his many political 
campaigns, and to ignore the positive records of his 
career and public service. The present writer con- 
fesses to have begun this Life, not indeed sharing 
any of the hatred or contempt so commonly felt 
towards Van Buren, but still given to many serious 
depreciations of him, which a better examination 
has shown to have had their ultimate source in the 
mere dislike of personal or political enemies, — a 
dislike to whose expression, often powerful and 
vivid, many writers have extended a welcome seri- 
ously inconsistent with the fairness of history. 

When Abraham Lincoln was chosen president 
in 1860, this predecessor of his by a quarter cen- 
tury was a true historical figure. The bright, 



4 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

genial old man connected, visibly and really, those 
stirring and dangerous modern days with the first 
political struggles under the American Constitu- 
tion, struggles then long passed into the quiet of 
history, to leave him almost their only living re- 
miniscence. Martin Van Buren was a man fully 
grown and already a politician when in 1801 the 
triumph of Thomas Jefferson completed the polit- 
ical foundation of tlie United States. Its profound 
inspiration still remained with him on this eve of 
Lincoln's election. Under its influence his polit- 
ical career had begun and had ended. 

At Jefferson's election the aspiration and fervor 
which attended the first, the new-born sense of 
American national life, had largely worn away. 
The ideal visions of human liberty had long before 
grown dim during seven years of revolutionary 
war, with its practical hardships, its vicissitudes of 
meanness and glory, and during the four years of 
languor and political incompetence which followed. 
In the agitation for better union, political theories 
filled the minds of our forefathers. Lessons were 
learned from the Achaean League, as well as from 
the Swiss Confederation, the German Empire, and 
the British Constitution. Both history and specu- 
lation, however, were firmly subordinated to an 
extraordinary common sense, in part flowing from, 
as it was most finely exliibited in, the luminous and 
powerful, if unexalted, genius of Franklin. From 
the open beginning of constitution-making at An- 
napolis in 1786 until the inauguration of John 



JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE 5 

A.dams, the American people, under the masterful 
ofovernins: of Washino^ton, were concerned with the 
framework upon which the fabric of their political 
life was to be wrought. The framework was doubt- 
less in itself of a vast and enduring importance. 
If the consolidating and aristocratic schemes of 
Hamilton had not met defeat in the federal con- 
vention, or if the separatist jealousies of Patrick 
Henry and George Clinton had not met defeat in 
Vir ovinia and New York after the work v/f the con- 
vention was done, there would to-day be a different 
American people. Nor would our history be the 
amazing story of the hundred years past. But 
upon the governmental framework thus set up 
could be woven political fabrics widely and essen- 
tially different in their material, their use, and 
their enduring virtue. For quite apart from the 
framework of government were the temper and tra- 
ditions of popular politics out of which comes, and 
must always come, the essential and dominant na- 
ture of public institutions. In this creative and 
deeper work Jefferson was engaged during his 
struggle for political power after returning from 
France in 1789, during his presidential career 
from 1801 to 1809, and during the more extraordi- 
nary, and in American history the unparalleled, 
supremacy of his political genius after he had left 
office. In the circumstances of our colonial life, 
in our race extractions, in our race fusion upon the 
Atlantic seaboard, and in the moral effect of forci- 
ble and embittered separation from the parei^ 



6 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

country, arose indeed, to go no further back, the 
political instincts of American men. It is, how- 
ever, fatal to adequate conception of our political 
development to ignore the enormous formative in- 
fluence which the twenty years of Jefferson's rule 
had upon American political character. But so 
partial and sometimes so partisan have been the 
historians of our early national politics in their 
treatment of that great man, that a just appre- 
ciation of the political atmosphere in which Van 
Buren began his career is exceedingly difficult. 

There was an American government, an Ameri- 
can nation, when Washington gladly escaped to 
Mt. Vernon from the bitterly factional quarrels of 
the politicians at Philadelphia. The government 
was well ordered ; the nation was respectable and 
dignified. But most of the people were either still 
colonial and provincial, or were rushing, in turbu- 
lence and bad temper, to crude speculations and 
theories. Twenty-five years later, Jefferson had 
become the political idol of the American people, 
a people completely and forever saturated with 
democratic aspirations, democratic ideals, what 
John Marshall called " political metaphysics," a 
people with strong and lasting characteristics, no 
longer either colonial or provincial, but profoundly 
national. The skill, the industry, the arts of the 
politician, had been used by a man gifted with 
the genius and not free from the faults of a phi- 
losopher, to plant in American usages, prejudices, 
and traditions, — in the very fibre of American 



JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE 7 

political life, a cardinal and fruitful idea. The 
work was done for all time. For Americans, gov- 
ernment was thenceforth to be a mere instrument. 
No longer a "symbol, or an ornament or crown of 
national life, however noble and august, it was a 
simple means to a plain end ; to be always, and if 
need be rudely, tested and measured by its practi- 
cal working, by its service to popular rights and 
needs. In those earlier days, too, there had been 
" classes and masses," the former of whom held 
public service and public policy as matters of dig- 
nity and order and high assertion of national right 
and power, requiring in their ministers peculiar 
and esoteric light, and an equipment of which 
common men ought not to judge, because they 
could not judge aright. Afterward, in Monroe's 
era of good feeling, the personal rivalries of presi- 
dential candidates were In bad temper enough ; but 
Americans were at last all democrats. Whether 
for better or worse, the nation had ceased to be 
either British or colonial, or provincial, in its char- 
acter. In the delightful Rip Van Winkle of a 
later Jefferson, during the twenty years' sleep, 
the old Dutch house has gone, the peasant's dress, 
the quaint inn with its village tapster, all the old 
scene of loyal provincial life. Rip returns to a 
noisy, boastful, self-assertive town full of Ameri- 
can '' push " and '' drive," and profane disregard 
of superiors and everything ancient. It was 
hardly a less change which spread through the 
United States in the twenty years of Jefferson's 



8 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

unrivaled and fruitful leadership. Superstitious 
reo-ard for the " well-born," for institutions of 
government as images of veneration apart from 
their immediate and practical use ; the faith in 
government as essentially a financial establishment 
v/hich ought to be on peculiarly friendly relations 
with banks and bankers ; the treatment and con- 
sideration of our democratic organization as an 
experiment to be administered with deprecatory 
deference to European opinion ; the idea that 
upon the great, simple elements of political belief 
and practice, the mass of men could not judge as 
wisely and safely as the opulent, the cultivated, 
the educated ; the idea that it was a capital fea- 
ture of political art to thwart the rashness and 
incompetence of the lower people, — all these the- 
ories and traditions, which had firmly held most 
of the disciplined thought of Europe and America, 
and to which the lurid horrors of the French Rev- 
olution had brought apparent consecration, — all 
these had now gone ; all had been fatally wounded, 
or were sullenly and apologetically cherished in 
the aonng: bitterness of the Federalists. There 
was an American people with as distinct, as power- 
ful, as characteristic a polity as belonged to the 
British islanders. In 1776 a youthful genius haa 
seized upon a colonial revolt against taxation as 
the occasion to make solemn declaration of a 
seeming abstraction about human rights. He had 
submitted, however, to suboiilinate his theory dur- 
ing the oriranization of national defense and the 



JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE 9 

strengthening of the framework of government. 
Nor did he shine in either of those works. But 
with the nation established, with a nnion secured 
so that its people could safely attend to the simpler- 
elements of human rights, Jefferson and his disci- 
ples were able to lead Americans to the temper, 
the aspirations, and the very prejudices of essen- 
tial democracy. The Declaration of Independ- 
ence, the ten amendments to the Constitution 
theoretically formulating the rights of men or of 
the States, sank deep into the sources of American 
political life. So completely indeed was the work 
done, that in 1820 there was but one political party 
in America ; all were Jeffersonian Republicans ; 
and when the Republican party was broken up in 
1824, the only dispute was whether Adams or 
Jackson or Crawford or Clay or Calhoun best re- 
presented the political beliefs now almost universal. 
It seemed to Americans as if they had never 
known any other beliefs, as if these doctrines ox 
their democracy were truisms to which the rest 
of the world was marvelously blind. 

Nothing in American j^ublic life has, in pro- 
longed anger and even savage desperation, equaled 
the attacks upon Jefferson during the steady 
growth of his stupendous influence. The hatred 
of him personally, and the belief in the wicked- 
ness of his private and public life, survive in our 
time. Nine tenths of the Americans who then 
read books sincerely thought him an enemy of 
mankind and of all that was sacred. Nine tenths 



10 MAKTIN VAN BUREN 

of the authors of American books on history or 
politics have to this day written under the influ- 
ence which ninety years ago controlled their pre- 
decessors. And for this there is no little reason. 
\s the American people grew conscious of their 
Dwn peculiar'^'and intensely active political force, 
there came to them a period of national and popu- 
lar life in which much was unlovely, much was 
crude, much was disagreeably vulgar. Books 
upon America written by foreign travelers, from 
the days of Jefferson down to our civil war, super- 
ficial and offensive as they often were, told a great 
deal of truth. We do not now need to wince at 
criticisms upon a rawness, an insolent condescen- 
sion towards the political ignorance of foreigners 
and the unhappy subjects of kings, a harshness in 
the assertion of the equality of Caucasian men, 
and a restless, boastful manner. The criticisms 
"vere in great measure just. But the critics were 
stupid and blind not to see the vast and vital work 
and change going on before their eyes, to chiefly 
regard the trifling and incidental things which 
disgusted them. Their eyes were open to all our 
faults of taste and manner, but closed to the self- 
dependent and self-assertive energy the disorder of 
whose exhibition would surely pass away. In 
every democratic experiment, in every experiment 
of popular or national freedom, there is almost 
inevitable a vulgarizing of public manners, a lack 
of dignity in details, which disturbs men who find 
restful delight in orderly and decorous public life ; 



JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE 11 

and their disgust is too often directed against be- 
neficent political changes or reforms. If one were 
to judge the i)olitical temper of the American peo- 
ple from many of our own writers, and still more 
if he were to judge it from the observations even 
of intelligent aud friendly foreigners prior to 1861, 
he would believe that temper to be sordid, mean, 
noisy, boastful, and even cruel. But from the war 
of 1812 with Enolaud to the election of Buchanan 
in 1856, the American people had been doing a 
profound, organic, democratic work. Meantime 
many had seen no more than the unsightly, the 
mean and trivial, the malodorous details, which 
were mere incidents and blemishes of hidden and 
dynamic operations. Unimaginative minds usually 
fail to see the greater and deeper movements of 
politics as well as those of science. In the public 
virtues then maturing there lay the ability long 
and strenuously to conduct an enterprise the 
greatest which modern times have known, and 
?n extraordinary popular capacity for restraint 
and discipline. In those virtues was sleeping a 
tremendously national spirit which, with cost a^d 
sacrifice not to be measured by the vast figures of 
the statistician, on one side sought independence, 
and on the other saved the Union, — an exalted 
love of men and truth and liberty, which, after all 
the enervations of pecuniary prosperity, endured 
with patience hardships and losses, and the less 
heroic but often. more dangerous distresses of taxa- 
tion, — at the North a magnanimity in victory 



12 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

unequaled in the traditions of men, and at the 
South a composure and dignity and absence of 
eitlier bitterness or meanness which brought out 
of defeat far larger treasures than could have 
come with victory. But these were not effects 
without a cause. In them all was only the fruit, 
the normal fruit, of the political habits, ideals, 
traditions, whose early and unattractive disorders 
had chagrined many of the best of Americans, and 
had seemed so natural to foreigners who feared or 
distrusted a democracy. There had been form- 
ing, during forty or fifty years of a certain raw 
unloveliness, the peculiar and powerful self-reliance 
of a people whose political independence meant far 
more than a mere separate government. 

In these years Van Buren was one of the chief 
men in American public life. He and his political 
associates had been profoundly affected b}^ the Jef- 
fersonian philosophy of government. They robustly 
held its tenets until the flame and vengeance of the 
slavery conflict drove them from political power. 
In our own day we have, in the able speeches with 
which Samuel J. Tilden fatigued respectful though 
often unsympathetic hearers at Democratic meet- 
ings, heard something of the same robust political 
philosophy, brought directly from intercourse with 
his famous neighbor and political master. Van 
Buren himself breathed it as the very atmosphere 
of American public life, during his early career 
which had just begun when Jeiferson, his robes 
of office dropped and his faults of administration 



JEFFERSON'S INFLUENCE 13 

forgotten, seemed the serene, wise old man presid- 
ing over a land comj^letely won to his ideals of 
democracy. Under this extraordinary influence 
and in this political light, there opened with tlie 
first years of the centurv the uublic life to be nar- 
rated in this volume. 



CHAPiER II 

EARLY YEARS. PROFESSIONAL LIFE 

At the close of the American Revolution, Abra- 
ham Van Buren was a farmer on the east bank of 
the Hudson River, New York. He was of Dutch 
descent, as was his wife, whose maiden name Hoes, 
corrupted from Goes, is said to have had distinction 
in Holland. But it would be mere fancy to find in 
the statesman particular traits brought from the 
dyked swamp lands whence some of his ancestors 
came. Those who farmed the rich fields of Colum- 
bia county were pretty thorough Americans ; their 
characteristics were more immediately drawn from 
the soil they cultivated and from the necessary 
habits of their life than from the lands, Dutch or 
English, from which their forefathers had emi- 
grated. Late in the eighteenth century they were 
no longer frontiersmen. For a century and more 
this eastern Hudson River country had been peace- 
fully and prosperously cultivated. There was no 
lack of high spirit ; but it was shown in lawsuits 
and political feuds rather than in skirmishes with 
red men. It was close to the old town of x41bany 
with its official and not undignified life, and had 
comparatively easy access to Nev/ York by sloop or 



EARLY YEARS 15 

the post-road. It had been an early settlement of 
the colony. Within its borders were now the es- 
tates and mansions of large landed proprietors, who 
inherited or acquired from a more varied and afflu- 
ent life some of the qualities, good and bad, of a 
country gentry. It was a region of easy, orderly 
comfort, sound and robust enough, but not sharing 
the straight and precise, though meddling, puritan- 
ical habits which a few miles away, over the high 
Berkshire hills, had come from the shores of New 
Eno^land. 

The elder Van Buren was said by his son's ene- 
mies to have kept a tavern ; and he probably did. 
Farming and tavern-keeping then were fairly in- 
terchangeable ; and the gracious manner, the tact 
w^ith men, which the younger Van Buren developed 
to a marked degree, it is easy to believe came 
rather from the social and varied life of an inn 
than from the harsher isolation of a farm. The 
statesman's boyish days were at any rate spent 
among poor neighbors. He was born at Kinder- 
hook, an old village of New York, on the 5th of 
December, 1782. The usual years of schooling 
were probably passed in one of the dilapidated, 
weather-beaten schoolhouses from which has come 
so much of what is best in American life. He 
studied later in the Kinderhook Academy, one of 
the higher schools which in New York have done 
good work, though not equaling the like schools in 
Massachusetts. Here he learned a little Latin. 
But when at fourteen years of age he entered a 



16 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

law office, he had of course the chief discipline of 
book-learning' vStill to acquire. In 1835 his cam- 
paign biographer rather rejoiced that he had so 
little systematic education, fearing that " from the 
ekxjuent pages of Livy, or the lioneyed eulogiums 
of Virgil, or the servile adulation of Horace, he 
might liave been inspired with an admiration for 
regal jwmp and aristocratic dignity uncongenial to 
the native independence of his mind," and have 
imbibed a " contempt for plebeians and common 
people," unless, perhaps, the speeches of popular 
leaders in Livy " had kindled his instinctive love 
of justice and freedom," or the sarcastic vigor of 
Tacitus '' had created in his bosom a fixed hatred 
of tyranny in every shape." At an early age, 
however, it is certain that Van Buren, like many 
other Americans of original force and with instinc- 
tive fondness for written pictures of human history 
and conduct, acquired an education which, though 
not that of a professional scholar, was entirely 
appropriate to the skillful man of affairs or the 
statesman to be set in conspicuous places. This 
work must have been largely done during the com- 
parative leisure of his legal apprenticeship. 
o^L /Lt was in 1796 that he entered the law office of 
Francis Sylvester at Kinderhook, where he re- 
mained until his twentieth year. He there read 
law. It is safe to say besides that he swept the 
office, lighted the fires in winter, and, like other 
^aw students in earlier and simpler days, had to do 
the work of an office janitor and errand bov, as 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 17 

well as to serve papers and copy the teclmical 
forms of the comtiioii law, and the tedious but 
often masterly pleadings of chancery. That his 
work as a student was done with great industry 
and thorouofhness is demonstrated by the fact that 
at an early age he became a successful and skillful 
advocate in arguments addressed to courts as dis- 
tinguished from juries, a division of professional 
work in which no skill and readiness will supply 
deficiencies in professional equipment. His early 
reputation for cleverness is illustrated by the story 
that when only a boy he successfully summed up a 
case before a jury against his preceptor Sylvester, 
being made by the justice to stand upon a bench 
because he was so small, with the exhortation, 
" There, Mat, beat your master." 

In 1802 Van Buren entered the office of Wil- 
liam P. Van Ness, in the city of New York, to 
complete his seventh and final year of legal study. 
Van Ness was himself from Columbia county and 
an eminent lawyer. He was afterwards appointed 
United States district judge by Madison ; and was 
then an influential Republican and a close friend 
and defender of Aaron Burr, then the vice-presi- 
dent. The native j^owers and fascination of Burr 
were at their zenith, though his political character 
was blasted. Van Buren made his acquaintance, 
and was treated with the distinguished and flatter- 
ing attention which the wisest of public men often 
show to young men of promise. Van Buren's ene- 
mies were absurdly fond of the fancy that in this 



18 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

slight intercourse he had acquired the skill and 
grace of his manner, and the easy principles and 
love of intrigue which they ascribe to him. Burr, 
for years after he was utterly disabled, inspired a 
childish terror in American politics. The mystery 
and dread about him were used by the opponents 
of Jackson because Burr had early pointed him 
out for the presidency, and by the opponents of 
Clay because in early life he had given Burr pro- 
fessional assistance. But upon Burr's candidacy 
for governor in 1804 Van Buren's freedom from 
his influence was clearly enough exhibited. 

In 1803 Van Buren, being now of age and ad- 
mitted as an attorney, returned to Kinderhook and 
there began the practice of his profession. The 
rank of counsellor-at-law was still distinct and 
superior to that of attorne}'^. His half-brother on 
his mother's side, James J. Van Alen, at once ad' 
mitted the young attorney to a law partnership. 
Van Alen was considerably older and had a prac- 
tice already established. Van Buren's career as a, 
lawyer was not a long one, but it was brilliant and 
highly successful. After his election to the United 
States Senate in 1821 his practice ceased to be 
very active. He left his profession with a fortune 
which secured him the ease in money matters so 
helpful and almost necessary to a man in public 
life. Merely professional reputations disajopear 
with curious and rather saddening promptness and 
completeness. Of the practice and distinction 
reached by Van Buren before he withdrew from 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 19 

the bar, although they were unsurpassed in the 
State, no vestige and few traditions remain beyond 
technical synopses of his arguments in the instruc- 
tive but hardly succulent pages of Johnson's, Wen- 
dell's, and Cowen's reports. 

At an early day the legal profession reached in 
our country a consummate vigor. Far behind as 
Americans were in other learning and arts, they 
had, within a few years after they escaped colonial 
dependence, judges, advocates, and commentators 
of the first rank. Marshall, Kent, and Story were 
securely famous when hardly another American of 
their time not in public and political life was 
known. In the legal art Americans were even 
more accomplished than in its science ; and Co- 
lumbia county and the valley of the Hudson were 
fine fields for legal practice. Many animosities 
survived from revolutionary days. The landed 
families, long used to administer the affairs of 
others as well as their own, saw with jealousy and 
fear the rapid spread of democratic doctrines and 
of levelinof and often insolent manners. Political 
feuds were rife, and frequently appeared in the 
professionally profitable collisions of neighbors with 
vaofrant cows, or on watercourses insufficient for 
the needs of the up-stream and the down-stream 
proprietors. There were slander suits and libel 
suits, and suits for malicious prosecution. Into 
the most legitimate controversies over doubts 
about property there was driven the bitterness 
which turns a lawsuit from a process to ascertain a 
right into a weapon of revenge. 



20 MARTIN 7AN BUREN 

Yan Buren's political opinions were strong and 
clear from the beginning of his law practice ; bnt 
he was in a professional minority among the rich 
Federalists of the county. The adverse discipline 
was invaluable. Through zeal and skill and large 
industry, he soon led the Republicans as their 
ablest lawyer, and the lawyers of Columbia county 
were famous. ^\'illiam AV. Van Ness, afterwards 
a judge of the supreme court of the State, Gros- 
venor, Elisha Williams, and Jacob R. Van Rens- 
selaer were active at the bar. Williams, althouirh 
his very name is nowadays hardly known, we can- 
not doubt from the universal testimony of con- 
temporaries, had extraordinary forensic talents. 
He was a Federalist ; and the most decisive proof 
of Van Buren's rapid professional growth was his 
promotion to be Williams's chief competitor and 
adversary. Van Buren's extraordinary application 
and intellectual clearness soon established him as 
the better and the more successful lawyer, though 
not the more powerful advocate. Williams at last 
said to his rival, " I get all the verdicts, and you 
get all the judgments." A famous pupil of Van 
Buren both in law and in politics, Benjamin F. 
Butler, afterwards attorney-general in his cabinet, 
finely contrasted them from his own recollection 
of their conflicts when he was a law student. 
" Never," he said, '' were two men more dissimilar. 
Both were eloquent ; but the eloquence of Williams 
was declamatory and exciting, that of Van Buren 
insinuating and delightful. Williams had the live 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 21 

lier imagination, Van Buren the sounder judgment. 
The former presented the strong points of his case 
in holder relief, invested them in a more brilliant 
coloring, indulged a more unlicensed and magni- 
ficent invective, and gave more life and variety to 
his arguments by his peculiar wit and inimitable 
humor. But Van Buren was his superior in ana- 
lyzing, arranging, and combining the insulated 
materials, in comparing and weighing testimony, 
in unraveling: the web of intricate affairs, in evis- 
ceratinof truth from the mass of diversified and 
conflicting evidence, in softening the heart and 
moulding it to his purpose, and in working into 
the judgments of his hearers the conclusions of his 
own perspicuous and persuasive reasonings." Most 
of this is applicable to Van Buren 's career on the 
wider field of politics ; and much here said of his 
early adversary on the tobacco-stained floors of 
country court-houses might have been as truly said 
of a later adversary of his, the splendid leader who, 
rather than Harrison, ought to have been victor 
over Van Buren in 1840, and over whom Van 
Buren rather than Polk ought to have been victor 
in 1844. 

In a few years Van Buren outgrew the pro- 
fessional limitations of Kinderhook. In February. 
1807, he had been admitted as a counsellor of the 
supreme court ; and this promotion he most happily 
celebrated by marrying Hannah Hoes, a young 
lady of his own age, and also of Dutch descent, a 
khis woman of his mother, and with whom he had 



22 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

been intimate from his childhood. In 1808, the 
council of appointment becoming Republican, he 
was made surrogate of Columbia county, succeed- 
ing his partner and half-brother Van Alen, a Fed- 
eralist in politics, who was, however, returned to 
the place in 1815, when the Federalists regained 
the council. The office was a respectable one, 
concerned with the probate of wills, and the order- 
ing of estates of deceased persons. Within a year 
after this appointment. Van Buren removed to the 
new and bustling little city of Hudson, directly on 
the river banks. Here he practiced law with 
rapidly increasing success for seven years. His 
pecuniary thrift now enabled him to purchase 
what was called " a very extensive and well-selected 
library." With this advantage he applied himself 
to " a systematic and extended course of reading," 
which left him a well, even an amply, educated 
man. His severity in study did not, however, ex- 
clude him from the social pleasures of which he 
was fond, and for which he was perfectly fitted. 
He learned men quite as fast as he learned books. 
A country surrogate, though then enjoying fees, 
since commuted to a salary, had only a meagre 
compensation. But the duties of Tan Buren's 
office did not interfere with his activity in the 
l^rivate practice of the law. On the contrary, 
the office enabled him to make acquaintances, a 
process which, even without adventitious aid, he 
always found easy and delightful. 

In 1813, having been elected a member of the 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 23 

Senate o£ the State, he became as such a member 
of the court for the correction of errors. This 
was the court of last resort, composed, until 1847, 
of the chancellor, the judges of the supreme court, 
the lieutenant-governor, and the thirty-two sena- 
tors. The latter, though often laymen, were meui- 
bers of the court, partly through a curious imitatiou 
of the theoretical function of the British House of 
Lords, and partly under the idea, even now feebly 
surviving in some States, that some besides lawyers 
ought to sit upon the bench in law courts to con- 
tribute the common sense which it was fancied 
might be absent from their more learned associates. 
It was not found unsuitable for members of this, 
the highest court, to be active legal practitioners. 
While Van Buren held his place as a member he 
was, in February, 1815, made attorney-general, 
succeeding Abraham Van Vechten, one of the 
famous lawyers of the State. Van Buren was then 
but thirty-two years old, and the professional emi- 
nence accorded to the station was greater than 
now. Among near predecessors in it had been 
Aaron Burr, Ambrose Spencer and Thomas Addis 
Emmett ; among his near successors were Thomas 
J. Oakley, Samuel A. Talcott, Greene C. Bronson 
and Samuel Beardsley, — all names of the first 
distinction in the professional life of New York. 
The office was of course political, as it has always 
been, both in the United States and the mother 
country. But Van Buren's appointuient, if it were 
made because he was an active and influential Re- 



24 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

publican in politics, would still not have been made 
unless his professional reputation had been high. 
The salary was $5.50 a da}^ with some costs, — 
not an unsuitable salary in days when the chancel- 
lor was paid but 13000 a year. He held the office 
until July, 1819, when, upon the capture of the 
council of appointment by a coalition of Clintonian 
Republicans and Federalists, he was removed to 
give place to Oakley, the Federalist leader in the 
State Assembly. 

In 1816 Van Buren, now nipidly reaching pro- 
fessional eminence, removed to Albany, the capital 
of New York. Though then a petty city of mean 
buildings and about 10,000 inhabitants, it had a 
far larger relative importance in the professional 
and social life of the State than has the later city 
of ten times the population, with its costly and 
enormous state-house, its beautiful public buildings, 
and its steep and numerous streets of fine resi- 
dences. In 1820 he purposed removing to New 
York ; but, for some reason altering his plans, con- 
tinued to reside at Albany until appointed secretary 
of state in 1829. His professional career was there 
crowned with most important and lucrative work. 
Soon after moving to Albany, he took into partner- 
ship Butler, just admitted to the bar. Between 
the two men there were close and life-long relations. 
The younger of them, also a son of Columbia 
county, reached great professional distinction, be- 
came a politician of the highest type, and remained 
steadfast in his attachment to Van Buren' s political 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 25 

fortunes, and to the robust and distinctly marked 
political doctrines and practices of the Albany 
Kegency. 

The law reports give illustrations of Van Buren's 
precision, his clear and forcible common-sense, and 
his aptitude for that learning of the law in which 
the great counsel of the time excelled. In 1813, 
soon after his service began as state senator, he de- 
livered ah opinion in a case of "" escape ; " and in 
very courteous words exhibited a bit of his dislike 
for Kent, then chief justice of the supreme court, 
whose judgment he helped to reverse, as well as 
his antipathy to imprisonment for debt, which he 
afterwards helped to abolish. It was a petty suit 
against the sureties upon the bond given by a debtor. 
Under a relaxation of the imprisonment for debt 
recently permitted, the debtor was, on giving the 
bond, released from jail, but upon the condition 
that he should keep within the "jail liberties," 
which in the country counties was a prescribed area 
around the jail. His bond was to be forfeit if he 
passed the " liberties." While the debtor was 
driving a cow to or from pasture, the latter con- 
temptuously deviated " four, six, or ten feet " from 
the liberties. The driver, yielding to inevitable 
bucolic impulse and forgetting his bond, leaped over 
the imaginary line to bring back the cow. He was 
without the liberties but a moment, and afterwards 
duly kej^t within them. But the creditor was watch- 
ful, and for the technical " escape " sued the sure., 
ties. Although the debtor was within the limits 



26 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

wlien suit was brought, the lower court refused to 
pardou the debtor's technical and unintentional 
fault. At common law the creditor was entitled to 
satisfaction of the debtor's body ; and the milder 
statute establishing jail liberties was, tlie court said, 
to be strictly construed against the debtor ; it was 
not enough that the creditor had the debtor's body 
when he called for it. The supreme court, headed 
by Kent, affirmed this curiously harsh decision. In 
the court of errors, Van Buren joined Chancellor 
Lansing in reversing the rule upon an elaborate re- 
view of the law, which to this day is important au- 
thority, and which could not have been more care- 
fully done had something greater seemed at stake 
than a bovine vagary and a few dollars. The young 
lawyer, wearing for a time the judicial robes, now 
sat in a review, by no means unpleasant, of the ut- 
terances of magistrates before whom he had until 
then stood in considerable awe ; and seized the oppor- 
tunity, doubtless with a keen perception of the drift 
of popular sentiment on matters of i:)ersonal liberty, 
to enlarge the mild policy of the later law. When 
it was urged that, if the law were not technically ad- 
ministered, imprisoned debtors would of a Sunday 
wander beyond the " limits," securely able to return 
before Monday, when the creditor could sue, — Van 
Buren, with a contemptuous fling at the supreme 
court, confessed in Johnsonian sentences his lenient 
temper towards these '' stolen pleasures," — his 
willingness that debtors should snatch the "few 
moments of liberty which, although soured by con- 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 27 

stant perturbation and alarm, are, notwithstanding, 
deemed fit subjects for judicial animadversion." 
His rhetoric was rather agreeably florid when he 
declared the law establishing " jail liberties " to be 
a concession for humane purposes made by the in- 
flexible spirit which authorized imprisonment for 
debt. He strongly intimated his sympathy to be 
with " the exertions of men of intelligence, reflec- 
tion, and philanthrojDy to mitigate its rigor ; of men 
who viewed it as a practice fundamentally wrong, 
a practice which forces their fellow-creatures from 
society, from their friends, and their agonized fam- 
ilies into the dreary walls of a prison ; which com- 
pels them to leave all those fascinating endearments 
to become an inmate with vermin ; " and all this, 
not for crime or frauds, " but for the misfortune of 
being poor, of being unable to satisfy the all-digest- 
ing stomach of some ravenous creditor." The prac- 
tice was one " confounding virtue and vice, and de- 
stroying the distinction between guilt and innocence 
which should unceasingly be cherished in every 
well-regulated government." Democrats rejoiced 
over this passage when Van Buren was a candidate 
for the presidency. Richard M. Johnson, then his 
associiite upon the Democratic ticket, had success- 
fully led an agitation for the abolition of such im- 
prisonment upon judgments rendered in the federal 
courts. 

Van Buren's professional life terminated with 
his election as governor in 1828. In 1830, while 
♦ 3cretary of state at Washington, he is said to have 



28 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

appeared before the federal supreme court in the 
oreat lItii>ation between Astor and the Sailors' Snu^ 
Harbor, in which he had been counsel below ; but 
no record is preserved of his argument there. His 
last well-known argument was before the court of 
errors at Albany in Varick v. Jackson, a branch of 
the famous Medcef Eden litigation. This long and 
highly technical battle was lighted up by the fame 
and competitions of the counsel. It arose upon the 
question whether a will of Eden which gave a landed 
estate to his son Joseph, but if Joseph died without 
children, then to his surviving brother, Medcef Eden 
the younger, created for Joseph the old lawyers' 
delio-ht of an " estate tail." If it were an " estate 
tail," then the law of 1782, which, in the general 
tendency of American legislation after the Revolu- 
tion, was directed against the entailing of property, 
would have made the first brother, Joseph, the ab- 
solute owner, and have defeated the later claim of 
Medcef. Joseph had failed while in possession of 
the property. His creditors, accepting the opinion 
of Alexander Hamilton, then the head of the bar, 
insisted that he had been the absolute owner, that 
the provision for his brother Medcef's accession to 
the property was nugatory as an attempt to entail 
the estate ; and upon this view the creditors sold 
the lands, which by the rapid growth of the cit} 
soon became of large value. Hamilton's opinion 
for years daunted the younger Medcef and his chil- 
dren from asserting the right which it was morally 
plain his father had intended for him. Aaron Burr, 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 29 

not less Hamilton's rival at the bar than in the pol- 
itics of New York, gave a contrary opinion ; bnt 
after killing' Hamilton in 1804 and yielding up the 
vice-presidency in 1805, his brilliant professional 
gifts were exiled from New York, On his return 
in 1812 from years of conspiracy, adventure, and 
romance, he took up the discredited Medcef Eden 
claim ; and in the judicial test of the question he, 
and not Hamilton, proved to have been correct. 
The struggle went on in a number of suits ; and 
when in 1823 the question was to be finally settled 
in the court of last resort, Burr, fearing, as he him- 
self intimated to the court, lest the profound sus- 
picion under which he rested might obscure and 
break the force of his legal arguments, or conscious 
that his past twenty years had dimmed his faculties, 
called to his aid Van Buren, then United States 
senator and a chief of the profession. As Van 
Buren and Burr attended together before the court 
of errors, they doubtless recalled their meetings in 
Van Ness's office twenty years before, when Burr, 
still a splendid though clouded figure in American 
life, hoped, by Federalist votes added to the Repub- 
lican secession which he led, to reach the governor- 
ship and recover his prestige ; those days in which 
the unknown but promising young countryman had 
interested a vice-president and enjoyed the latter's 
skillful and not always insincere flattery. The firm 
and orderly procedure of Van Buren's life was now 
well contrasted with the discredited and profligate 
ability of the returned wanderer. Against this 



30 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

earlier but long deposed, and against this later and 
regnant chief in the Kepublican polities of New 
York, were ranged in these cases David B. Ogden, 
the famous lawyer of the Federalist ranks, Samuel 
A. Talcott, and Samuel Jones. In Van Buren's 
long, masterly,, and successful argument there was 
again an edge to the zeal with which he attacked 
the opinion of Kent, the Federalist chancellor, who 
asked the court of errors to overrule its earlier de- 
cisions, and the chancellor's own decision as well, 
and defeat the intention of the elder Medcef Eden. 
Van Buren's professional career was most envi- 
able. It lasted twenty-five years. It ended before 
he was forty-six, when he was in the early ripeness 
of his powers, but not until a larger and more shin- 
ing career seemed surely opened before him. He 
left the bar with a competence fairly earned, which 
his prudence and skill made grow into an ample 
fortune, without even malicious suggestion in the 
scurrility of politics that he had profited out of 
public offices. In money matters he was more 
thrifty and cautious than most Americans in public 
places. His enemies accused him of meanness and 
parsimony, but apparently without other reason 
than that he did not practice the careless and use- 
less profusion and luxury which many of his coun- 
trymen in political life have thought necessary to 
indulge even when their own tastes were far simpler. 
In the course of professional employment he ac- 
quired an important estate near Oswego, whose 
value rapidly enhanced with the rapid growth of 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 31 

western New York and the development of the lake 
commerce from that port. 

The chief interest now found in Van Buren's pro- 
fessional career lies in its relation to his political 
life. He was the only lawyer of conspicuous and 
practical and really great professional success who 
has reached the White House. In the long prepa- 
ration for the bar, in the many hours of leisure at 
Kinderhook and Hudson and even Albany per- 
mitted by the methods of practice in vogue before 
there were railways or telegraphs, and when trav3l 
was costly and slow and postage a shilling or more, 
he gained the liberal education more difficult of 
access to the busier young attorney and counsel of 
these crowded days. Great lawyers were then 
fond of illustrations from polite literature ; they 
loved to set off their speeches with quotations from 
the classics, and to give their style finish and orna- 
ment not practicable to the precise, prompt methods 
which tlieir successors learn in the driving routine 
of modern American cities. Van Buren did not, 
however, become a great orator at the bar. His ad- 
mirer, Butler, upon returning to partnership with 
him in 1820, wrote indeed to an intimate friend, 
Jesse Hoyt (destined afterwards to bring grief and 
scandal upon both the partners), that if he were 
Van Buren he " would let politics alone," and be- 
come, as Van Buren might, the " Erskine of the 
State." But though his success, had he continued 
in the profession, would doubtless have been of the 
very first order, his oratory would never have 



32 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

reached the warm and virile splendor of Erskine, 
or the weighty magnificence of Webster. Van 
Buren's work as a lawyer brought him, however, 
something besides wealth and the education and 
refinement of books, and something which neither 
Erskine nor Webster gained. The profession af- 
forded him an admirable discipline in the conduct 
of affairs ; and affairs, in the law as out of it, are 
largely decided by human nature and its varying 
peculiarities. The preparation of details ; the keen 
and far-sighted arrangement of the best, because 
the most practicable, plan ; the refusal to fire off 
ammunition for the popular applause to be roused 
by its noise and flame ; the clear, steady bearing in 
mind of the end to be accomplished, rather than 
the prolonged enjoyment or systematic working out 
of intermediate processes beyond a utilitarian ne- 
cessity, — all these elements Van Buren mastered 
in a signal degree, and made invaluable in legal 
practice. To men more superbly equipj^ed for tours 
deforce^ who ignored the uses of long, attentive, 
varied, painstaking work, there was nothing admir- 
able in the methods which Van Buren brought into 
political life out of his experience in the law. He 
was, to undisciplined or envious opponents, a " lit- 
tle magician," a trickster. The same thing appears, 
in every department of human activity, in the anger 
which failure often flings at success. 

The predominance of lawyers in our politics was 
very early established, and has been a characteristic 
distinction between politics in England and politics 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 33 

in America. Conspicuous as lawyers have been in 
the politics of the older country, they have rarely 
been figures of the first ranii. They have served 
in all its modern ministries, and sometimes in 
other than professional stations ; but, with the 
unimportant exception of Perceval, not as the 
chief. English opinion has not unjustly believed 
its greater landed proprietors to be animated with 
a strong and peculiar desire for English greatness 
and renown ; nor has the belief been destroyed by 
their frequent opposition to the most beneficent 
popular movements. Among these proprietors and 
those allied with them, even when not strictly in 
their ranks, England has found her statesmen. To 
this day, the speech of a lawyer in the British 
House of Commons is fancied to show the narrow- 
ness of technical training, or is treated as a bid 
for promotion to some of the splendid seats open 
to the English bar. In America, the great landed 
proprietor very early lost the direction of i^ublic 
affairs. All the members of the '' Virginian dy- 
nasty " were, it is true, large land-owners, and in 
the politics of New York there were several of 
them.. But land-ownership was to Jefferson, Mad- 
ison, and Monroe simply a means of support while 
they attended to public affairs ; it was not one of 
their chief recommendations to the landed interest 
throughout the country. For a time in the early 
politics of New York the landed wealth of the 
Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and Livingstons was 
of itself a source of strength ; but in the spread of 



34 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

democratic sentiment it was found that to be a 
great landlord was entirely consistent with dull- 
ness, narrowness, and timid selfishness. Amono- 
the landlords there soon and inevitably decayed 
that sense of public obligation belonging to exalted 
position and leadership which sometimes brings 
courage, high public sjiirit, and even a sound and 
active political imagination, to those who preside 
over bodies of tenants. The laws were chanoed 
which facilitated family accumulations of land. 
Since these early years of the century a great 
land-owner has been in politics little more than any 
other rich man. Both have had advantages in that 
as in any other field of activity. Certain easy 
graces not uncommon to inherited wealth have 
often been popular, — not, however, for the wealth, 
but for themselves. Where these graces have ex- 
isted in America without such wealth, they have 
been none the less popular ; but in England a life- 
time of vast public service and the finest personal 
attainments have failed to overcome the distrust of 
a landless man as a sort of adventurer. 

When Van Buren's career began, the men who 
were making money in trade or manufactures were 
generally too busy for the anxious and busy cares 
of public life ; the tradesmen and manufacturers 
who had already made money were past the time 
of life when men can vigorously and skillfully turn 
to a new and strange calling. There was no lei- 
sure class except land-owners or retired men of 
business. Lawyers, far more than those of any 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 35 

other calling, became public men, and naturally 
enough. Their experience of life and their know- 
ledge of men were large. The popular interest in 
their art of advocacy ; their travels from county 
seat to county seat ; their speeches to juries in 
towns where no other secular public speaking was 
to be heard ; the varieties of human life which 
lawyers came to know, — varieties far greater 
where the same men acted as attorneys and advo- 
cates than in England where they acted in only one 
of these fields, — these and the like, combined with 
the equipment for tlie forms of political and gov- 
ernmental work which was naturally gained in 
legal practice and tiu systematic study of law, gave 
to distinguished lawyers in America tlieir large 
place in its political life. For this i)lace the liber- 
ality of their lives helped, besides, to fit them. 
They had ceased to be disqualified for it by their 
former close allian(^e, as in England, with the 
landed aristocracy ; and they had not yet begun to 
suffer a disqualification, frequently unjust, for 
their close relations with corporate interests, be- 
tween which and the public there often arises an 
antagonism of interests. De Tocqueville. after his 
visit in 1832, said that lawyers formed in America 
its highest political class and the most cultivated 
circle of society ; that the American aristocracy 
was not composed of the rich, but that it occupied 
the judicial bench and the bar. And the descrip- 
tions of the liberal and acute though theoretical 
Frenchman are generally trustworthy, however 



36 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

often liis striking generalizations are at fault. 
Such, then, was the intimacy of relations between 
the professions of law and politics when Van Buren 
shone in both. And when, in his early prime, he 
gave up the law, neither forensic habits nor those 
of the attorney were yet too strongly set to permit 
the easy and complete diversion of his powers to 
the more generous and exalted activity of public 
life. 

It is simpler thus separately to treat Van Buren's 
3.ife as a lawyer, because in a just view of, the man 
it must be subordinate to his life as a politician. 
It is to be remembered, however, that in his earlier 
years his progress in polities closely attended in 
time, and in much more than time, his professional 
progress. When, at thirty, he sat as an appellate 
judge in the court of errors, he was already power- 
ful in politics ; when, at thirty-two, he was attorney- 
general, he was the leader of his party in the state 
senate ; when, at forty-five, he had perhaps the 
most lucrative professional practice in New York, 
he was the leader of his party in the United States 
Senate. But it will be easier to follow his political 
career without interruption from his work as a 
lawyer, honorable and distinguished as it was, and 
much of his political ability as he owed to its fine 
discipline. 

Van Buren's domestic life was broken up by the 
death of his wife at Alban}^ in February, 1819, 
leaving him four sons. To her memory Van Buren 
remained scrupulously loyal until his own death 



PROFESSIONAL LIFE 37 

forty-three years afterwards. We may safely be- 
lieve political enemies when, after saying of him 
many dastardly things, they admitted that he had 
been an affectionate husband. Nor were accusa- 
tions ever made ao^ainst the uprightness and purity 
of his private li^t 



CHAPTER ill 

STA.TE SENATOR. — ATTORNET-GEXERAL. — MEMBER 
OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 

The politics of New York State were never more 
bitter, never more personal, than when Van Buren 
entered the field in 1803. The Fedei'alists were 
sheltered by tlie unique and noble prestige of 
Washington's name ; and were conscious that in 
wealth, education, refinement, they far excelled the 
Republicans, They were contemptuously suspi- 
cious of the unlettered ignorance, the intense and 
exuberant vanity, of the masses of American men. 
It was by that contempt and suspicion that they 
invited the defeat which, protected though they 
were by the property qualifications required of 
voters in New York, they met in 1800 at the hands 
of a people in whom the instincts of democracy 
were strong and unsubmissive. This was in our 
history the one complete and final defeat of a great 
national party while in power. The Federalists 
themselves made it final, — by their silly and un- 
worthy anger at a political reverse ; by their pro- 
foundly immoral efforts to thwart the popular will 
and make Burr president ; by their fatal and 
ingrained disbelief in common men, who, they 



STATE SENATOR 39 

thought, foolishly and impiously refused to accept 
wisdom and guidance from the possessors of learn- 
ing and great estates ; and finally by their unpatri- 
otic opposition to Jefferson and Madison in the 
assertion of American rights on the seas during 
the Napoleonic wars. All these drove the party, 
in spite of its large services in the past and its 
eminent capacity for service in the future, forever 
from the confidence of the American people. The 
Federalists maintained, it is true, a party organiza- 
tion in New York until after the second war with 
England ; but their efforts were rather directed to 
the division and embarrassment of their adversaries 
than to victories of their own strength or upon 
their own policy. They carried the lower house 
of the legislature in 1809, 1812, and 1813. There 
were among them men of the first rank, who re- 
tained a strong hold on pojndar respect, among 
whom John Jay and Eufus King were deservedly 
shinino' fimires. But never after 1799 did the 
Federalists elect in New York a governor, or con- 
trol both legislative houses, or secure any solid 
power, except by coalition with one branch or an- 
other of the Republicans. 

Van Buren's fondness for politics was soon de- 
veloped. His father was firmly attached to the 
Jeffersonians or Republicans, — a rather discred- 
ited minority among the Federalists of Columbia 
county and the estates of the Hudson River aristo- 
cracy. Inheriting his political preferences. Van 
Buren, with a great body of other young Anieri 



40 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

cans, caught the half-doctrinaire enthusiasm which 
Jefferson then inspired, an enthusiasm which in 
Van Buren was to be so enduring a force, and to 
which sixty years later he was still as loyal as he 
had been in the hot disputes on the sanded floors 
of the village store or tavern. During these boyish 
years he wrote and spoke for his party ; and before 
he was eighteen he was formally appointed a dele- 
gate to a Republican convention for Columbia and 
Rensselaer counties. 

Van Buren returned from New York to Colum- 
bia county late in 1803, just twenty-one years old. 
At once he became active in politics. The Repub- 
lican party, though not strong in his county, was 
dominant in the State ; and the game of politics 
w^as played between its different factions, the Fed- 
eralists aiding one or the other as they saw their 
advantage. The Republicans were Clintonians, 
Livingstonians, or Burrites. George Clinton, in 
whose career lay the great origin of party politics 
of New York, was the Republican leader. The 
son of an Irish immigrant, he had, without the aid 
of wealth or influential connections, made himself 
the most popular man in the State. He was the 
first governor after colonial days were over, and 
was repeatedly reelected. It was his opposition 
which most seriously endangered New York's adop- 
tion of the Federal Constitution. But in spite of 
the wide enthusiasm which the completed Uuion 
promptly aroused, this opposition did not prevent 
his reelection in 1789 and 1792. The majorities 



EARLY NEW YORK POLITICS 41 

were small, however, it being even doubtful whether 
in the latter year the majority were fairly given 
him. In 1795 he declined to be a candidate, and 
Robert R. Livingston, the Republican in his place, 
was defeated. In 1801 Clinton was again elected. 
Later he was vice-president in Jefferson's second 
term and Madison's first term ; and his aspiration 
to the presidency in 1808 was by no means un- 
reasonable. He was a strong party leader and a 
sincerely patriotic man. The Livingston family- 
interest in New York was veiy great. The chan_ 
cellor, Robert R. Livingston, who now^adays is 
popularly associated with the ceremony of Wash- 
ington's inauguration, had been secretary for for- 
eion affairs under the Articles of Confederation, 
and had left the Federalists in 1790. After, his 
sixty years had under the law disqualified him for 
judicial office, he became Jefferson's minister to 
France and negotiated with Bonaparte the Louis- 
iana treaty. Brockholst Livingston was a judge 
of the Supreme Court of New York in 1801. In 
1807 Jefferson promoted him to the federal Su- 
preme Court. Edward Livingston, younger than 
his brother, the chancellor, by seventeen years, 
was lono; after to be one of the finest characters in 
our i^olitics. Early in Washington's administration 
he had become a strong pro-French Republican, 
and had opposed Jay's treaty with Great Britain ; 
though forty years later, when Jackson brought 
him from Louisiana to be secretary of state, he 
was sometimes reminded of his still earlier Federal* 



42 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ism. Morgan Lewis, judge of the Supreme Court 
and afterwards chief justice, and still later gover- 
nor, was a brother-in-law of the chancellor. Smith 
Thompson, also a judge and chief justice, and later 
secretary of the navy under Monroe and a judge 
of the federal Supreme Court, and Van Buren's 
competitor for governor in 1828, was a connection 
of the family. There were sneers at the Livingston 
conversion to Democracy as there always are at 
political conversions. But whether or not Chan- 
cellor Livingston's Democracy came from jealousy 
of Hamilton in 1790, it is at least certain that he 
and his family connections rendered political ser- 
vices of the first importance during a half century. 
The drafting of Jackson's nullification proclama- 
tion in 1833 by Edward Livingston was one of the 
noblest and most signal services which Americans 
have had the fortune to render to their country. 

The best offices were largely held by the Clinton 
and Livingston families and their connections, an 
arrangement very aristocratic indeed, but which 
did not then seem inconsistent with efficient and 
decorous performance of the public business. 
Burr naturally gathered around him those restless, 
speculative men who are as immoral in their aspi- 
rations as in their conduct, and whose adherence 
has disgraced and weakened almost every demo- 
cratic movement known to history. Burr had 
been attorney-general ; he had refused a seat in 
the Supreme Court ; he had been United States 
senator ; and now in the second office of the natiop 



EARLY POLITICAL CAREER 43 

he presided with distinguished grace over the Fed- 
eral Senate. His hands were not yet red with 
Hamilton's blood when Van Buren met him at 
New York in 1803 ; but Democratic faces were 
averted from the man who, loaded with its honors 
and enjoying its confidence, had intrigued with its 
enemies to cheat his exultant party out of their 
choice for president. In tribute to the Republi- 
cans of New York, George Clinton had already 
been selected in his j^lace to be the next vice-presi- 
dent. While Van Buren was near the close of 
his law studies at New York, Burr was preparing 
to restore his fortunes by a popular election, for 
which he had some Republican support, and to 
which the fatuity of the defeated party, again re- 
jecting Hamilton's advice, added a considerable 
Federalist support. William P. Van Ness, as 
" Aristides," one of the classical names under 
which our ancestors were fond of addressinof the 
public, had in the Burr interest written a bitter 
attack on the Clintons and Livino^stons, accusing: 
them, and with reason, of dividing the offices be- 
tween themselves. 

Van Buren was easily proof against the allure- 
ments of Burr, and even the natural influence of 
so distinguished a man as Van Ness, with whom 
he had been studying a year. Sylvester, his first 
preceptor, was a Federalist. So was Van Alen, 
his half-brother, soon to be his partner, who in 
May, 1806, was elected to Congress. But Van 
Buren was firm and resolute in party allegiance. 



44 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

In the election for governor in April, 1804, Burr 
was badly beaten by Morgan Lewis, the Clinton- 
Livingston candidate, whom Van Buren warmly 
supported, and Burr's political career was closed. 
The successful majority of the Republicans was 
soon resolved into the Clintonians, led by Clinton 
and eTudge Ambrose Spencer, and the Livingston- 
ians, led by Governor Lewis. The active par- 
ticipation of judges in the bitter politics of the 
time illustrates the universal intensity of political 
feeling, and goes very far to justify Jefferson's and 
Van Buren's distrust of judicial opinions on po- 
litical questions. Brockholst Livingston, Smith 
Thompson, Ambrose Spencer, Daniel D. Tomp- 
kins, — all judges of the State Supreme Court, — 
did not cease when they donned the ermine to 
be party politicians ; neither did the chancellors 
Robert R. Livingston and Lansing. Even Kent, 
it is prett}^ obvious, was a man of far stronger and 
more openly partisan feelings than we should to- 
day think fitting so great a judicial station as he 
held. The quarrels over offices were strenuous 
and increasing from the very top to the bottom of 
the community. 

The Federalists in 1807 generally joined the 
Lewisites, or '' Quids." Governor Lewis, finding 
that the jealousy of the Livingston interests woulJ 
defeat his renomination by the usual caucus of 
Republican members of the legislature, be^.ame the 
candidate of a public meeting at New York, and 
of a minority caucus, and asked help from the 



SURROGATE 4t) 

Federalists. Such an alliance always seemed mon- 
strous only to the Republican faction that felt 
strong enough without it. The regular legislative 
caucus, controlled by the Clintonians, nominated 
Daniel D. Tompkins, then a judge of the Supreme 
Court, and for years after the Kepublican " war- 
horse." Van Buren adhered to the purer, older, 
and less patrician Democracy of the Clintonians. 
Tompkins was elected, with a Clintonian legisla- 
ture ; and the result secured Van Buren's first 
appointment to public office. A Clintonian coun- 
cil of appointment was chosen. The council, a 
complex monument of the distrust of executive 
power with which George III. had filled his re- 
volted subjects, was composed of five members, 
beins: the governor and one member from each of 
the four senatorial districts, who were chosen by 
the Assembly from among the six senators of the 
district. The four senatorial members of the 
council were always, therefore, of the political 
faith of the Assembly, except in cases where all 
the senators from a district belonged to the mi- 
nority party in the Assembly. To this council 
belonged nearly every appointment in the State, 
even of local officers. Prior to 1801 the governor 
appointed, with the advice and consent of the 
council. After the constitutional amendment of 
that year, either member of the council could 
nominate, the appointment being made by the 
najority. Van Buren became surrogate of Co- 
jumbia county on February 20, 1808. There was 



46 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

no prescribed term of office, the commission really 
running until the opposition party secured the 
council of appointment. Van Biiren held the 
office about live years and until his removal on 
March 19, 1813, when his adversaries had secured 
control of the council. 

At this time the system of removing the lesser 
as well as the greater officers of government for 
political reasons was well established in New York. 
It is impossible to realize the nature of Van Bu- 
ren's political education without understanding 
this old system of proscription, whose influence 
upon American public life has been so prodigious. 
The strife over the Federal Constitution had been 
fierce. Its friends, after their victory, sought, 
neither unjustly nor unnaturally, to punish Gov- 
ernor Clinton for his opposition. Although Wash- 
ington wished to stand neutral between parties, 
he still believed it politically suicidal to appoint 
officers not in sympathy with his administration.^ 
Hamilton undoubtedly determined the New York 
appointments when the new government was 
launched, and they were made from the political 
enemies of Governor Clinton, — a course provok- 
ing an animosity which not improbably appeared 

1 " I shall not, whilst I have the honor to administer the g-ov- 
ernment, hring a man into any office of consequence, knowingly, 
whose political tenets are adverse to the measures which the g-en- 
eral government are pursuing- ; for this, in my ojiinion, would he 
a sort of political suicide." — Washington to Pickering, secretary 
of war, September 27, 1795. Vol. 11 of Sparks's edition of Wash- 
ingtori's Writings, 74. 



EARLY NEW YOUK POLITICS 4:7 

in the more numerous state appointments controlled 
by Clinton and the Republican council. After the 
excesses of the French Revolution the Republicans 
were denounced as Jacobins and radicals, danger- 
ous in politics and corrupt in morals. The family 
feuds aided and exa2:s;erated the divisions in thia 
small community of freehold voters. Appointments 
were made in the federal and state services for 
political reasons and for family reasons, precisely as 
they had long been made in England. Especially 
alono;- the rich river counties from New York to 
the upper Hudson were so distributed the lucrative 
offices, which were eagerly sought for their profit 
as well as for their honor. 

The contests were at first for places naturally 
vacated by death or resignation ; the idea of the 
property right of an incumbent actually in office 
lingered until after the last century was out. It is 
not clear when the first removals of subordinate 
officers took place for political reasons. Some 
were made by the Federalists during Governor 
Jay's administration ; but the first extensive re- 
movals seem to have occurred after the elections of 
1801. For this there were two immediate causes. 
In that year the exclusive nominating power of the 
governor was taken from him. Each of the other 
four members of the council of appointment could 
now nominate as well as confirm. Appointments 
and removals were made, therefore, from that year 
until the new ConstitutioQ of 1821, by one of the 
worst of appointing bodies, a commission of several 



48 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

men whose consultations were secret and whose re- 
sjx)nsibility was divided. Systematic abuse of the 
power of appointment became inevitable. There 
was, besides, a second refison in the anger against 
Federalists, which they had gone far to provoke, 
and against their long and by no means gentle 
domination. This anger induced the Republicans 
to seek out every method of punishment. But for 
this, the abuse might have been long deferred. 
Nor is it unlikely that the refusal of Jefferson, in- 
augurated in March of that year, to make a ''• clean 
sweep " of his enemies, turned the longing eyes of 
embittered Republicans in New York more eagerly 
to the fat state offices enjoyed by their insolent 
adversaries of the past twelve years. 

The Clintons and Livingstons had led the Re- 
publicans to a victory at the state election in 
April, 1801. Later in that year George Clinton, 
now again governor, called together the new coun- 
cil with the nominating power vested in every one 
of its five members. This council acted under dis- 
tinguished auspices, and it deserves to be long re- 
membered. Governor Clinton presided, and his 
famous nephew, De Witt Clinton, was below him 
in the board. The latter represented the Clinton- 
ian Republicans.^ Ambrose Spencer, a man of 
great parts and destined to a notable career, repre- 

^ I use the political name then in vogue. The greater part of 
the Republicans have, since the rearrangement of parties in John 
Quincy Adams's time, or rather since Jackson's time, been known 
as Democrats. 



SPOILS SYSTEM 49 

sented the Livingstons, of whom he was a family 
connection. Roseboom, the other Repabliean, was 
easily led by his two abler party associates. The 
fifth member did not count, for he was a Fede- 
ralist. Two of the three really distinguished men 
of this council, De Witt Clinton and Ambrose 
Spencer, it is not unjust to say, first openly and 
responsibly established in New York the ^' spoils 
system " by removals, for political reasons, of offt- 
cers not political. The term of office of the four 
senatorial members of this council had commenced 
while the illustrious Federalist John Jay was gov- 
ernor ; but they rejected his nominations until he 
was tired of makinr>- them, and refused to call them 
together. When Clinton took the governor's seat, 
he promptly summoned the board, and in August, 
1801, the work began. De Witt Clinton publicly 
formulated the doctrine, but it did not yet reach 
its extreme form. He said that the principal ex- 
ecutive offices in the State ought to be filled by 
the friends of the administration, and the more 
unimportant offices ought to be proportionately 
distributed between the two parties. The coun- 
cil rapidly divided the chief appointments among 
the Clintons and Livingstons and their personal 
supporters. Officers were selected whom Jay had 
refused to appoint. Edward Livingston, the chan- 
cellor's brother, was given the mayoralty of New 
York, a very profitable as well as important sta- 
tion ; Thomas Tillotson, a brother-in-law of Chan- 
cellor Livingston, was made secretary of state, in 



50 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

place of Daniel Hale, removed ; John V. Henry, a 
distinguished Federalist lawyer, was removed from 
the comptrollership ; the district attorney, the clerk 
and the recorder of New York were removed ; 
William Coleman, the founder of the " Evening 
Post," and a strong adherent of Hamilton, was 
turned out of the clerkship of the Circuit Court. 
And so the w^ork went on through minor offices. 
New commissions were required by the Constitu- 
tion to be issued to the puisne judges of the county 
courts and to justices of the peace throughout the 
State once in three y«ears. Instead of renewing 
the commissions and preserving continuity in the 
administration of justice, the council struck out 
the names of Federalists and inserted those of Re- 
publicans. The proceedings of this council of 1801 
have profoundly affected the j^olitics of New York 
to this day. Few political bodies in America have 
exercised as serious and lasting an influence upon 
the political habits of the nation. The tradition 
that Van Buren and the Albany Regency began 
political proscription is untrue. The system of 
removals was thus established several years before 
Van Buren held his first office. Its founders, De 
Witt Clinton and Ambrose Spencer, were long his 
political enemies. Governor Clinton, whose hon- 
orable record it was that during the eighteen years 
of his governorship he had never consented to a 
political removal, entered his protest — not a very 
hearty one, it is to be feared — in the journal of 
the council ; but in vain. In the next year the two 



SPOILS SYSTEM 51 

chief offenders were promoted, — De Witt Clinton 
to be United States senator in the place of General 
Armstrong, a brother-in-law of Chancellor Living- 
ston, and Ambrose Spencer to be attorney-general ; 
and two years later Spencer became a judge of the 
Supreme Court. 

After the removals there began a disintegration 
of the party hitherto successfully led by Burr, the 
Clintons, and the Livingstons. Colonel Swartwout, 
Burr's friend, was called by De Witt Clinton a liar, 
scoundrel and villain ; although, after receiving two 
bullets from Clinton's pistol in a duel, he was as- 
sured by the latter, with the courtesy of our grand- 
fathers, that there was no personal animosityo 
Burr's friends had of course to be removed. But 
in 1805, after the Clintons and the Livingstons had 
united in the election of Lewis as governor over 
Burr, they too quarreled, — and naturally enough, 
for the offices would not go around. So, after the 
Clintonians on the meeting of the legislature early 
in 1806 had captured the council, they turned upon 
their recent allies. Maturin Livingston was re- 
moved from the New York recordership, and Til- 
lot son from his place as secretary of state. The 
work was now done most thoroughly. Sheriffs, 
clerks, surrogates, county judges, justices of the 
peace, had to go. But at the corporation election 
in New York in the same year, the Livingstonians 
and Federalists, with a majority of the common 
council, in their fashion righted the wrong, and, 
with a vigor not excelled by their successors a half 



52 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

century later, removed at once all the subordinate 
municipal officers subject to their control who were 
Clintonians. In 1807 the Livingstonian Republi- 
cans, or, as they were now called from the governor, 
the Lewisites, with the Federalists and JBurrites, 
secured control of the state council ; and proceeded 
promptly to the work of removals, defending it as 
a legitimate return for the proscriptive course of 
their predecessors. In 1808 the Clintonians re- 
turned to the council, and, through its now famil- 
iar labors, to the offices from which the Lewisites 
were in their turn driven. In 1810 the Federalists 
controlled the Assembly which chose the council ; 
and they enjo3^ed a *' clean sweep " as keenly as had 
the contending Republican factions. But the elec- 
tion of this year, the political record tells us, taught 
a lesson which politicians have ever since refused 
to learn, perhaps because it has not always been 
tanght. The removal of the Republicans from 
office " had the natural tendency to call out all their 
forces." The Clintonians in 1811, therefore, were 
enabled by the ]ieople to reverse the Federalist pro- 
scription of 1810. The Federalists, again in power 
in 1813, again followed the imiform usage then 
twelve years old. Political removals had become 
part of the unwritten law. 

At this time Van Buren suffered the loss of his 
office as surrogate, but doubtless without any sense 
of private or public wrong. It was the customary 
fate of war. In 1812 he was nominated for state 
senator from the middle district, composed ot' 



STATE SENATOR 53 

Columbia, Dutchess, Orange, Ulster, Delaware, 
Chenango, Greene, and Sullivan counties, as the 
candidate of the Clintonian Republicans agaiiist 
Edward P. Livingston, the candidate of the Lewis- 
ites or Livinsfstonians and Burrites as well as the 
Federalists. Livingston was the sitting member. 
and a Republican of powerful family and political 
connections. Van Buren, not yet thirty, defeated 
him by a majority of less than two hundred out of 
twenty thousand votes. In November, 1812, he 
took his seat at Albany, and easily and within a 
few months reached a conspicuous and powerful 
place in state politics. 

These details of the establishm,ent of the '-' spoils 
system " in New York politics seem necessary to be 
told, that Van Buren's own participation in the 
wi-ong may be fairly judged. It is a common his- 
torical vice to judge the conduct of men of earlier 
times by standards which they did not know. Van 
Buren found thoroughly and universally established 
at Albany, when he entered its life, the rule that, 
upon a change in the executive, there should be a 
change in the offices, without reference to their po- 
litical functions. He had in his own person expe- 
rienced its operation both to his advantage and to 
his disadvantage. Federalists and Republicans 
were alike committed to the rule. The most dis- 
tinguished and the most useful men in active public 
life, whatever their earlier opinion might have been, 
had acquiesced and joined in the practice. Nor 
was the practice changed or extended after Van 



54 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Biiren came into state politics. It continued as it 
had thus begun, until he became a national figure. 
Success in it required an ability and skill of which 
he was an easy master ; nor does he seem to have 
shrunk from it. But he was neither more nor less 
reprehensible than the universal public sense about 
him. For it must be remembered that the " spoils 
system " was not then offensive to the more enlight- 
ened citizens of New York. The system was no 
excess of democracy or universal suffrage. It had 
arisen amidst a suffrage for governor and senators 
limited to those w^ho held in freehold land worth at 
least £100, and for assemblymen limited to those 
who held in freehold land worth £20, or paid a 
yearly rent of forty shillings, and who were rated 
and actually paid taxes. It was practiced by men 
of aristocratic habits chosen by the well-to-do classes. 
It grew in the disputes of great family interests, 
and in the bitterness of popular elements met in a 
new country, still strange or even foreign to one 
another, and permitted by their release from the 
dangers of w ar and the fear of British oppression 
to indulge their mutual dislikes. 

The frequent '' rotation " in office which was 
soon to be pronounced a safeguard of republican 
institutions, and which Jackson in December, 1829, 
told Congress w^as a "" leading principle in the Re- 
publicans' creed," was by no means an unnatural 
step towards an improvement of the civil service 
of the State. Reformers of our day lay great stress 
upon the fundamental rule of democratic govern^ 



SPOILS SYSTEM 55 

tiient, that a public office is simply a trust for the 
people ; and they justly find the chief argument 
against the abuses of patronage in the notorious use 
of office for the benefit of small portions of the peo- 
ple, to the detriment of the rest. In England, how- 
ever, for centuries (and to some extent the idea 
survives there in our own time), there was in an 
office a quality of property having about it the 
same kind of sacred immunity which belongs to 
real or personal estate. There were reversions to 
offices after the deaths of their occupants, like 
vested remainders in lands. It was offensive to the 
ordinary sense of decency and justice that the right 
of a public officer to appropriate so much of the 
public revenue should be attacked. It did not of- 
fend the public conscience that great perquisites 
should belong to officers performing work of the 
most trifling value or none at all. The same prac- 
tices and traditions, weakened by distance from 
England and by the simpler life and smaller wealth 
of the colonists, came to our forefathers. They ex- 
isted when the democratic movement, stayed during 
the necessities of war and civil reconstruction, re- 
turned at the end of the last century and became 
all-powerful in 1801. To break this idea of pro- 
perty and right in office, to make it clear that every 
office was a mere means of service of the people at 
the wish of the people, there seemed, to very patri- 
otic and generally very wise men, no simpler way 
than that the people by their elections should take 
away and distribute offices in utter disregard of the 



56 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

interests of those who held them. The odious re- 
sult to which this afterwards led, of makiug offices 
the mere property of influential politicians, was but 
imperfectly foreseen. Nor did that result, inevit- 
able as it was, follow for many years. There seems 
no reason to believe that the incessant and exten- 
sive changes in office which began in 1801, seri- 
ously lowered the standard of actual public service 
until years after Van Buren ' was a powerful and 
conspicuous politician. Political parties were pretty 
generally in the hands of honest men. The prosti- 
tuted and venal disposition of '' spoils," though a 
natural sequence, was to come long after. Rotation 
was practiced, or its fruits were accepted and en- 
joyed with satisfaction, by public men of the State 
who were really statesmen, who had high standards 
of public honor and duty, whose minds were directed 
towards great and exalte^l public ends. If it seemed 
right to De Witt Clinton, Edward Livingston, 
Eobert R. Livingston, and Ambrose Spencer, surely 
lesser gods of our early political Olympus could not 
be expected to refuse its advantages or murmur at 
its hardships. Nor was the change distasteful to 
the people, if we may judge by their political be 
havior. No faction or party seems to have becL 
punished by public sentiment for the practice ex- 
cept in conspicuous cases like those of De Witt 
Clinton and Van Buren, where sometimes blows 
aimed at single men roused popular and often an 
undeserved sympathy. The idea that a public offi- 
cer should easily and naturally go from the ran^s 



SPOILS SYSTEM 57 

of the people without S23ecial equipment, and as 
easily return to those ranks, has been popularly 
agreeable wherever the story of Cinclnnatus has 
been told. Early in this century the closeness of 
offices to ordinary life, and the absence of an or^ 
ganized bureaucracy controlling or patronizing the 
masses of men, seemed proper elements of the great 
democratic reform. There had not yet arisen the 
very modern and utilitarian and the vastly better 
conception of a service, the responsible directors of 
whose policy should be changed with popular senti- 
ment, but whose subordinates should be treated by 
the public as any other employer would treat them, 
upon simple and unsentimental rules of business. 
Another practical consideration makes more intelli- 
gible the failure of our ancestors to perceive the 
dangers of the great change they permitted. Offices 
were not nearly as technical, their duties not nearly 
as uniform, as they have grown to be in the more 
complex procedures of our enormously richer and 
more populous time. Every officer did a multitude 
of things. Intelligent and active men in unofficial 
life shifted with amazins^ readiness and success 
from one calling to another. A general became a 
judge, or a judge became a general, — as, indeed, 
we have seen in later days. A merchant could learn 
to survey ; a farmer could keep or could learn to 
keep fair records. 

In the art of making of the lesser offices ammu- 
nition with which to fight great battles over great 
questions, Van Buren became a master. His im-» 



58 MARTIX VAN BUREN 

perturbable temper and patience, his keen reading 
of the motives and nses of men, gave him so firm 
a hold upon politicians that it has been common to 
forget the undoubted hold he long had upon the 
people. In April, 1816, he was reelected senator 
for a second term of four years. His eight years 
of service in the senate expired in 1820. 

In November, 1812, the first session of the new 
legislature was held to choose presidential electors. 
Not until sixteen years later were electors chosen 
directly by the people. Van Buren voted for the 
candidates favorable to De Witt Clinton for presi- 
dent as against Madison. In the successful strug- 
gle of the Clintonians for these electors, he is said 
in this, his first session, to have shown the address 
*and activity which at once made him a Republican 
leader. For his vote against Madison Van Buren's 
friends afterwards made many apologies ; his ad- 
versaries declared it unpardonable treachery to 
one of the revered Democratic fathers. But the 
young politician was not open to much condemna- 
tion. De Witt Clinton, though he had but just 
reached the beofinnins: of middle life, was a verv 
able and even an illustrious man. He had been 
unanimously nominated in an orderly way by a 
caucus of the Republican members of the legisla- 
ture of 1811 and 1812 of which Van Buren was 
not a member. He had accepted the nomination 
and had declined to withdraw from it. There was 
a strong Republican opposition to the declaration 
of war at that time, because preparation for it had 



STATE SENATOR 59 

not been adequately made. Most of the Repub- 
lican members of Congress from New York had 
voted against the declaration. The virtues and 
abilities of Madison were not those likely to make 
a successful war, as the event amply proved. 
There was natural and deserved discontent with 
the treatment by Jefferson's administration, in 
which Madison had charsre of foreion relations, 
and by Madison's own administration, of the diffi- 
culties caused by the British Orders in Council, 
the Berlin and Milan decrees of Napoleon, and the 
unprincipled depredations of both the great belli- 
gerents. Van Buren is said by Butler, then an 
inmate of his family, to have been an open and 
decided advocate of the embargo, and of all the 
strong measures proposed against Great Britain 
and of the war itself. Nor was this very inconsis- 
tent with his vote for Clinton. He had a stroncrer 
sense of allegiance to his party in the State than 
to his party at Washington ; and the Republican 
party of New York had . regularly declared for 
Clinton. For once at least Van Buren found him- 
self voting with the great body of the Federalists, 
men who had not, like John Quincy Adams, he- 
come reconciled to the strong and obvious, though 
sometimes ineffective, patriotism of Jefferson's and 
Madison's administrations. But whatever had been 
the motives which induced Van Buren to suppoi-t 
Clinton, they soon ceased to operate. Within a 
few months after this the political relations be- 
tween the two men were dissolved ; and they were 



60 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

politically hostile, until Clinton's death fourteen 
years afterwards called from Van Buren a pathetic 
tribute. 

Although the youngest man but one, it was said, 
until that time elected to the state senate, Van 
Buren was in January, 1814, chosen to prepare 
the answer then customarily made to the speech of 
the frovernor. In it he defended the war, which 
had been bitterly assailed in the address to the 
governor made by the Federalist Assembly. Polit- 
ical divisions even when carried to excess were, 
he said, inseparable from the blessings of freedom ; 
but such divisions were unfit in their resistance of 
a foreign enemy. The great body of the New York 
Republicans, with Governor Tompkins at their 
head, now gave Madison vigorous support ; al- 
though their defection in 1812 had probably made 
possible the Federalist success at the election for 
the Assembly in 1813, which embarrassed the na- 
tional administration. Van Buren warmly sup 
ported Tompkins for his reelection in April, 1813, 
and prepared for the legislative caucus a highly 
declamatory, but clear and forcible, address to Re- 
publican electors in his behalf. The provocations 
to war were strongly set out. It was declared that 
*' war and war alone was our only refuge from 
national degradation ; " the " two great and crying 
grievances " were " the destruction of our com- 
merce, and the impressment of our seamen ; " for 
Americans did not anticipate the surrender at 
Ghent two years later to the second wrong. While 



STATE SENATOR 61 

American sailors' " deeds of heroic valor make old 
Ocean smile at the humiliations of her ancient 
tyrant," the address urged Americans to mark the 
man, meaning- the trading Federalist, who believed 
"in commuting our sailors' rights for the safety of 
our merchants' goods." In the sophomoric and 
solemn rhetoric of wliicli Americans, and English- 
men too, were then fond, it pointed out that the 
favor of citizens was not sought " by the seductive 
wiles and artful blandishments of the corrupt min- 
ions of aristocracy," who of course were Federal- 
ists, but that citizens were now addressed " in the 
language which alone becomes freemen to use, — 
the language to which alone it becomes freemen to 
listen." 

In the legislative sessions of 1813 and 1814 Van 
Buren gave a practical and skillful support to ad- 
ministration measures. But many of them were 
balked by the Federalists, until in the election of 
April, 1814, the rising patriotism of the country, 
undaunted by the unskillful and unfortunate con- 
duct of the war, pronounced definitely in favor of 
a strong war policy. The Republicans recovered 
control of the Assembly ; and there were already a 
Republican governor and Senate. An extra session 
was summoned in September, 1814, through which 
exceedingly vigorous measures were carried against 
Federalist opposition. Van Buren now definitely 
led. Appropriations were made from the state 
treasury for the pay of militia in tlie national ser- 
vice. The State undertook to enlist twelve thou- 



62 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sand men for two years, a corps of sea fencibles 
consisting of twenty companies, and two regiments 
of colored men ; slaves enlisting with the consent 
of their masters to be freed. Van Buren's " classi- 
fication act " Benton afterwards declared to be the 
" most energetic war measure ever adopted in this 
country." By it the whole military population was 
divided into 12,000 classes, each class to furnish 
one able-bodied man, making the force of 12,000 
to be raised. If no one volunteered from a class, 
then any member of the class was authorized to 
procure a soldier by a bounty, the amount of which 
should be paid by the members of the class accord- 
ing to their ability, to be determined by assessors. 
If no soldier from the class were thus procured, 
then a soldier was to be peremptorily drafted from 
each class. Van Buren was proud enough of this 
act to file the draft of it in his own handwriting 
with the clerk of the Senate, indorsed by himself : 
" The original Classification Bill, to be preserved 
as a memento of the patriotism, intelligence, and 
firmness of the legislature of 1814-15. M. V. B. 
Albany, Feb. 15, 1815." 

Cheered, after many disasters, by the victory at 
Plattsburg and the creditable battle of Lundy's 
Lane, the Senate, in Van Buren's words, congrat- 
ulated Governor Tompkins upon '' the brilliant 
achievements of our army and navy during the 
present campaign, which have pierced the gloom 
that for a time obscured our political horizon." 
The end of the war left in high favor the Kepul> 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL 63 

licans who had supported it. The people were 
good-humoredly willing to forget its many ineffi- 
ciencies, to recall complacently its few glories, and 
to find little fault with a treaty which, if it estab- 
lished no disputed right, at least brought peace 
without surrender and without dishonor. Jack- 
son's fine victory at New Orleans after the treaty 
was signed, though it came too late to strengthen 
John Quincy Adams's dauntless front in the peace 
conference, was quickly seized by the people as the 
summing up of American and British prowess. 
The Republicans now had a hero in the West, as 
well as a philosopher at Monticello. Van Buren 
drafted the resolution giving the thanks of New 
York '' to Major-General Jackson, his gallant offi- 
cers and troops, for their wonderful and heroic 
victory." 

In the method then well established the Repub- 
licans celebrated their political success in 1814. 
AmoniT the removals, Abraham Van Vechten lost 
the post of attorney-general, which on February 
17, 1815, was conferred upon Van Buren for his 
brilliant and successful leadership in the Senate. 
He remained, however, a senator of the State. At 
thirty-two, therefore, he was, next to the governor, 
the leader of the Tompkins Republicans, now so 
completely dominant ; he held two political offices 
of dignity „and importance ; and he was conducting 
besides an active law practice. 

De Witt Clinton, after his defeat for the presi- 
dency, suffered other disasteis. It was in January, 



64 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

1813, that he and Van Buren broke their political 
relations ; and the Republicans very largely fell off 
from him. The reasons for this do not clearly 
appear ; but were probably Clinton's continuance 
of hostility to the national administration, which 
seemed unpatriotic to the Republicans, and some 
of the mysterious matters of patronage in which 
Clinton had been long and highly proscriptive. 
In 1815 the latter was removed from the mayoralty 
of New York by the influence of Governor Tomp- 
kins in the council. He had been both mayor and 
senator for several years prior to 1812. He was 
mayor and lieutenant-governor when he was a can- 
didate for the presidency. 

In 1816 the Republicans in the Assembly, then 
closely divided between them and the Federalists 
(who seemed to be favored by the apportionment), 
sought one of those immoral advantages whose 
wrong in times of high party feeling seems invisible 
to men otherwise honorable. In the town of Pen- 
nington a Federalist, Henry Fellows, had been 
fairly elected to the Assembly by a majority of 30 ; 
but 49 of his ballots were returned as reading 
" Hen. Fellows ; " and his Republican competitor, 
Peter Allen, got the certificate of appointment. 
The Republicans, acting, it seems, in open con- 
ference with Van Buren, insisted not only upon 
organizing the house, which was perhaps right, but 
upon what was wrong and far more important. 
They elected the council of appointment before 
Fellows was seated, as he afterwards was bv an 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL 65 

almost iinaiiimoos vote. The " Peter Allen legis- 
lature " is said to have become a term of reproach. 
But, as with electoral abuses in later days, the 
Federalists were not as much aided as they ought 
to have been by this sharp practice of their rivals ; 
the people perhaps thought that, as they were in 
the minority everywhere but in the Assembly, they 
ought not to have been permitted, by a capture of 
the council, to remove the Republicans in office. 

At any rate the election in April, 1816, while 
the " Peter Allen legislature " was still in office, 
went heavily in favor of the Republicans, Van 
Buren receiving his second election to the Senate. 
On March 4, 1816, he was chosen by the legisla- 
ture a regent of the University of the State of New 
York, an office which he held until 1829. The 
University was then, as now, almost a myth, being 
supposed to be the associated colleges and aca- 
demies of the State. But the regents have had a 
varying charge of educational matters. 

In 1817 the agitation, so superbly and with such 
foresight conducted by De Witt Clinton, resulted 
in the passage of the law under which the con- 
struction of the Erie Canal began. Van Buren's 
enmity to Clinton did not cause him to oppose 
the measure, of which Hammond says he was an 
*■' early friend." With a few others he left his 
party ranks to vote with Clinton's friends ; and 
this necessary accession from the " Bucktails " is 
said by the same fair historian to have been pro- 
duced by Van Buren's " efficient and able efforts." 



66 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

In liis speech favoring it he declared that his vote 
for the law would be " the most important vote he 
ever gave in his life ; " that " the project, if exe- 
cuted, would raise the State to the highest possible 
pitch of fame and grandeur," an expression not 
discredited by the splendid and fruitful result of 
the enterprise. Clinton, after hearing the speech, 
forgot for a moment their ])olitical collisions, and 
personally thanked Van Buren. 

In April, 1817, Clinton was elected governor by 
a practically unanimous vote. His resolute cour- 
age and the prestige of the canal policy compelled 
this tribute from the Republicans, in spite of his 
sacrilegious presidential aspiration in 1812, and 
his dismissal from the mayoralty of New York in 
1815. Governor Tompkins, now vice-president, 
was Clinton's only peer in New York politics. 
The popular tide was too strong for the efforts of 
Tompkins, Van Buren, and their associates. In 
the eagerness to defeat Clinton, it was even sug- 
gested that Tompkins should serve both as gov- 
ernor and vice-president ; should be at once ruler 
at Albany and vice-ruler at Washington. Van 
Buren did not, however, go with the hot-heads of 
the legislature in opposing a bill for an election to 
fill the vacancy left by the resignation, which it 
was at last thought necessaiy for Tompkins to 
make, of the governorship. No one dared run 
against Clinton ; and he triumphantly returned to 
political power. Under this administration of his, 
the party feud took definite form. Clinton's He- 



ATTORNEY-GENERAL 67 

publican ad v^ersaries were dubbed " Bucktails " 
from the oruaments worn on ceremonial occasions 
by the Tammany men who had long been Clinton's 
enemies. The Bucktails and their successors were 
the "" reguhir " Republicans, or the Democrats as 
the}^ were later called ; and they kept their regu- 
larity until, long afterwards, the younger and 
greater Bucktail leader, when venerable and laden 
with honors, became the titular head of the Barn- 
burner defection. The merits of the feud between 
Bucktails and Clintcmians it is now difficult to 
find. Each accused the other of coquetting with 
the Federalists ; and the accusation was nearly 
always true of one or the other of them. Politics 
was a higldv developed and extremely interesting 
game, whose })layers, thougli really able and patri- 
otic men, were apparently careless of the undigni- 
fied parts they were playing. Nor are Clintonians 
and Bucktails alone in political history. Cabinets 
of the greatest nations have, in more modern times, 
broken on grounds as sheerly personal as those 
which divided Clinton and Van Buren in 1818. 
British and French ministries, as recent memoirs 
and even recent events have shown, have fallen to 
pieces in feuds of as little essential dignity as be- 
longed to those of New York seventy years ago. 

In 1819 the Bucktails suffered the fate of war ; 
and Van Buren, their efficient head, was removed 
from the attorney-general's office. Thurlow Weed, 
then a country editor, grotesquely wrote at the 
time that ^' rotation in office is the most striking 



88 MARTIN VAN BUllEN 

and brilliant feature of excellence in our benign 
form of government ; and that by this doctrine, 
bottomed, as it is, upon the Magna Charta of our 
liberties. Van Buren's removal was not only sanc- 
tioned, but was absolutely required." The latter 
still remained state senator, and soon waged a 
short and decisive campaign to recover political 
mastery. He now came to the aid of Governor 
Tompkins, who during the war with England had 
borrowed money for public use upon his personal 
responsibility, and in the disbursement of several 
millions of dollars for war purposes had, through 
carelessness in bookkeeping or clerical detail, ap- 
parently become a debtor of the State. The comp- 
troller, in s])ite of a law passed in 1819 to indem- 
nify Tompkins ft)r his j)^triotic services, took a 
hostile attitude which threatened the latter with 
pecuniary destruction. In March, 1820, Van 
Buren threw himself into the contest with a skill 
and generous fervor which saved the ex-governor. 
Van Buren's speech of two days for the old chief 
of the Bucktails, is described by Hammond, a 
political historian of New York not unduly friendly 
to Van Buren, to have been '' ingenious, able, and 
eloquent." 

It was also in 1820 that Van Buren promoted 
the reelection of Rufus King, the distinguished 
Federalist, to the United States Senate. His mo- 
tives in doing this were long bitterly assailed ; but 
as the choice was intrinsically admirable, Van 
Buren was probably glad to gratify a patriotic 



STATE SENATOR 69 

impulse which was not very inconsistent with party 
advantage. In 1819 the Republican caucus, the 
last at which the Bucktails and Clintonians both 
attended, was broken up amid mutual recrimina- 
tions. John C. Spencer, the son of Ambrose 
Spencer, and afterwards a distinguished Whig, was 
the Clintonian candidate, and had the greater 
number of Republican votes. In the legislature 
there was no choice, Rufus King having fewer 
votes than either of the Republicans. When the 
legislature of 1820 met, there appeared a pamphlet 
skillfully written in a tone of exalted patriotism. 
This decided the election for King. Van Bureii 
was its author, and was said to have been aided by 
William L. Marcy. Both had suffered at thft 
hands of Clinton. However much they may havf. 
been so influenced in secret, they gave in publif^ 
perfectly sound and weighty reasons for returning 
this old and distinguished statesman to the place 
he had honored for many years. In 1813 King 
had received the votes of a few Republicans, with- 
out whom he would have been defeated by a Re- 
publican competitor. The Clintonians and their 
adversaries had since disputed which of them had 
then been guilty of party disloyalty. But it can 
hardly be doubted that King's high character and 
great ability, with the revolutionary glamour about 
him, made his choice seem patriotic and popular, 
and therefore politically prudent. 

Van Buren's pamphlet of 1820 was addressed 
60 the Republican members of the legislature by a 



70 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

" fellow-member " who told them that he knew and 
was personally known to most of them, and that 
he had, " from his infancy, taken a deep interest 
in the Iionor and prosperity of the party." This 
anonymous " fellow-meaiber " pronounced the sup- 
port of King by Republicans to ••' be an act honor- 
able to themselves, advantageous to the country, 
and just to him." He declared that the only re- 
luctance Republicans had to a public avowal of 
their sentiments arose from a " commendable ap- 
prehension that their determination to support him 
under existing circumstances might subject them 
to the suspicion of having become a party to a 
political bargain, to one of those sinister commu- 
tations of principle for power, which they think 
common with their adversaries, and against which 
they have remonstrated with becoming spirit." He 
showed that there were degrees even among Feder- 
alists; that some in the war had been influenced 
by " most envenomed malignity against the admin- 
istration of their own government ; " that a second 
and " very numerous and resj^ectable portion " had 
been those " who, inured to opposition and heated 
by collision, were poorly qualified to judge dispas- 
sionately of the measures of government," who 
tliought the war impolitic at the time, but who 
were ignorantly but honestly mistaken ; but that a 
third class of them had risen " superior to the pre- 
judices and pas.sions of those with whom they once 
acted." In the last class had been Rufus King; 
at home and in the Senate he had supported the 



STATE SENATOR 71 

administration ; lie had helped procure loans to the 
State for war purposes. The address skillfully 
recalled his Revolutionary services, his membership 
in the convention which framed the Federal Con- 
stitution, his appointment by Washington as min- 
ister to the English court, and his continuance there 
under Jefferson. He was declared to be opposed 
to Clinton. The address concluded by reciting that 
there had been in New York " exceptionable and 
unprincipled political bargains and coalitions," 
which with darker offenses ought to be proved, to 
vindicate the great body of citizens "from th( 
charge of participating in the profligacy of the few, 
and to give rest to that perturbed spirit which now 
haunts the scenes of former moral and political 
debaucheries ; " but added that the nature of a vote 
for King precluded such suspicions. 

The last statement was just. King's return was 
free from other suspicion than that he probably 
preferred the Van Buren to the Clinton Repub- 
licans. Van Buren, seeing that the Federalist 
party was at an end, was glad both to do a public 
service and to ally with his party, in the divisions 
of the future, some part of the element so finely 
represented by Rufus King. In private Van Buren 
urged the support of King even more emphatically. 
" We are committed," he wrote, " to his support. 
It is both wise and honest, and we must have no 
fluttering in our course. Mr. King's views towards 
us are honorable and correct. . . . Let us not, 
then, have any halting. I will put my head on its 



72 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

propriety." Van Buren's partisanship always had 
a mellow character. He 23racticed the golden rule 
of successful politics, to foresee future benefits 
rather than remember past injuries. Indeed, it is 
just to say more. In sending- King to the Senate 
he doubtless experienced the lofty pleasure which 
a politician of public spirit feels in his occasional 
ability to use his power to reach a beneficent end. 
which without the power he could not have reached, 
— a stroke which to a petty politician would seem 
dangerous, but which the greater man accomplishes 
without injury to his party standing. A year or 
two after King's election, when Van Buren joined 
him at Washington, there were established the 
most agreeable relations between them. The re- 
finement and natural decorum of the younger man 
easily fell in with the polished and courtly manner 
of the old Federalist. Benton, who had then just 
entered the Senate, said it was delightful to behold 
the deferential regard wdiich Van Buren paid to his 
venerable colleague, a regard always returned by 
King with marked kindness and respect. 

In this year the era of good feeling was at its 
height. Monroe was reelected president by an 
almost unanimous vote, with Tompkins again as 
vice-president. The good feeling, however, was 
among the people, and not among the politicians. 
The Republican party was about to divide by rea- 
son of the very completeness of its supremacy. 
The Federalist party was extinguished and its 
members scattered. The greater number of them 



STATE SENATOR 73 

in New York went with the Clintonian Repub- 
licans, with whom they afterwards formed the chief 
body of the Whig party. A smaller number of 
them, among whom were James A. Hamilton and 
John C. Hamilton, the sons of the great founder 
of the Federalist party, William A. Duer, John A. 
King (the son of the reelected senator), and many 
others of wealth and high social position, ranged 
themselves for a time in the Bucktail ranks under 
Van Buren's leadership. In the skng of the day, 
they were the "• high-minded Federalists," because 
they had declared that Clinton's supporters prac- 
ticed a personal subserviency '' disgusting to high- 
minded and honorable men." With this addition, 
the Bucktails became the Democratic party in New 
York. In April, 1820, the gubernatorial election 
was between the Clintonians supporting Clinton, 
and the Bucktails supporting Tompkins, the Vice- 
President. Clinton's recent and really magnificent 
public service made him successful at the polls, but 
his party was beaten at other points. 

Rufus Kino's reelection to the Senate was be- 
lieved to have some relation to the Missouri ques- 
tion, then aoitatinii' the nation. In one of his let- 
ters urging his Republican associates to support 
King, Van Buren declared that the Missouri ques- 
tion concealed no plot so far as King was concerned, 
but that he, Van Buren, and his friends, would 
"give it a true direction." King's strong opposi- 
tion to the admission of Missouri as a slave State 
was, however, perfectly open. If he returned to 



74 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the Senate, it was certain he would steadily vote 
against any extension of slavery. Van Buren 
knew all this, and doubtless meant that Kina' was 
bargaining- away none of his convictions for the 
senatorshij). But what the "■ true direction " was 
which was to be given the Missouri question, is 
not clear. About the time of King's reelection 
Van Buren joiued in calling a public meeting at 
Albany to protest against extending slavery beyond 
the Mississippi. He was absent at the time of the 
meeting, and refused the use of his name upon the 
committee to send the anti-slavery resolutions to 
Washington. Nor is it clear whether his absence 
and refusal were significant. He certainly did not 
condemn the resolutions ; and in January, 1820, 
he voted in the state Senate for an instruction to 
the senators and representatives in Congress " to 
oppose the admission, as a State in the Union, of 
any territory not comprised within the original 
boundary of the United States, without making 
the prohibition of slavery therein an indispensable 
condition of admission." This resolution undoubt- 
edly expressed the clear convictions of the Repub- 
licans in New York, whether on Van Buren's or 
Clinton's side, as well as of the remaining Feder- 
alists. 

Van Buren's direct interest in national politics 
had already begun. In 1816 he was present in 
AVashington (then a pretty serious journey from 
Albany) when the Re^Dublican congressional cau- 
cus was held to nominate a president. Governor 



STATE SENATOR- 75 

Tompkins, after a brief canvass, retired ; and Craw- 
ford, then secretary of war, became the candidate 
against Monroe, and was supported by most of the 
Republicans from New York. Van Buren's prefer- 
ence was not certainly known, though it is sup- 
posed he preferred Monroe. In 1820 he was 
chosen a presidential elector in place of an absen- 
tee from the electoral college, and participated in 
the all but unanimous vote for Monroe. He voted 
with the other New York electors for Tompkins 
for the vice-presidency. In April, 1820, he wrote 
to Henry Meigs, a Bucktail congressman then at 
Washington, that the rascality of some of the de- 
puty postmasters in the State was intolerable, and 
cried aloud for relief ; that it was impossible to 
penetrate the interior of the State with friendly 
papers ; and that two or three prompt removals 
were necessary. The postmaster-general was to be 
asked " to do an act of justice and render us a par- 
tial service " by the removal of the postmasters 
at Bath, Little Falls, and Oxford, and to appoint 
successors whom Van Buren named. In January, 
1821, Governor Clinton sent this letter to the leg- 
islature, with a message and other papers so nu- 
merous as to be carried in a green bag, which gave 
the name to the message, in support of a charge 
that the national administration had interfered in 
the state election. But the '' green-bag message " 
did Van Buren little harm, for Clinton's own pro- 
scriptive rigor had been great, and it was only 
two years before that Van Buren himself had been 



m MARTIN VAN BUREN 

removed from the attorney-generalship. In 1821 
the political division of the New York Republicans 
was carried to national politics. When a speaker 
was to be chosen in place of Clay, Taylor of New 
York, the Kepublican candidate, was opposed by 
the Bufktail congressmen, because he had sup- 
ported Clinton. 

In February, 1821, Van Buren gained the then 
dignified promotion to the federal Senate. He was 
elected by the Bucktails against Nathan Sanford, 
the sitting senator, who was supported by the Clin- 
tonians and Federalists. Van Buren was now 
thirtj^-eight years old, and in the early prime of his 
powers. He had run the gauntlet of two popular 
elections ; he had been easily first among the Re- 
publicans of the state Senate ; he had there shown 
extraordinary political skill and an intelligent and 
public spirit : he had ably administered the chief 
law office of the State which was not judicial. 
Though not yet keenly interested in any federal 
question, — for his activity and thought had been 
sufficiently engaged in affairs of his own State, — 
he turned to the new field with an easy confidence, 
amj)ly justified by his mastery of the problems wdth 
which he had so far grappled. He reached Wash- 
ington the undoubted leader of his party in the 
State. The prestige of Governor Tompkins, al- 
though just reelected vice-president, had suffered 
from his recent defeat for the governorship, and 
from his pecuniary and other difficulties ; and be- 
sides, he obviously had not Van Buren's unrivaled 
equipment for political leadership. 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 77 

Before Van Buren attended his first session in 
the federal capital he performed for the public 
most honorable service in the state constitutional 
convention which sat in the autumn of 1821. This 
body illustrated the earnest and wholesome temper 
in which the most powerful public men of the 
State, after many exhibitions of partisan, personal, 
and even petty animosities, could treat so serious 
and abidino^ a matter as its fundamental law. The 
Democrats sent Vice-President Tompkins, both the 
United States senators. King and Van Buren, the 
late senator, San ford, and Samuel Nelson, then 
beerinnino* a lono- and honorable career. The Clin- 
tonians and Federalists sent Chancellor Kent and 
Ambi'ose Spencer, the chief justice. Van Buren 
was chosen from Otsego, and not from his own 
county, probably because the latter was politically 
unfavorable to him. 

This convention was one of the steps in the 
democratic march. It was called to broaden the 
suffrage, to break up the central source of patron- 
age at Albany, and to enlarge local self-adminis- 
tration. The government of New York had so far 
been a freeholders' government, with those great 
virtues, and those greater and more enduring vices, 
which were characteristic of a government con- 
trolled exclusively by the owners of land. The 
painful apprehension aroused by the democratic 
resolution to reduce, if not altogether to destroy, 
the exclusive privileges of land-owners, was ex- 
pressed in the convention by Chancellor Kent. 



78 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

He would not " bow before the idol of universal 
suffrage ; " this extreme democratic princi])le, he 
said, had " been regarded with terror by the wise 
men of every age ; " wherever tried, it had brought 
" corruption, injustice, violence, and tyranny ; " if 
adopted, posterity would " deplore in sackcloth and 
ashes the delusion of the day." He wished no 
laws to pass without the free consent of the owners 
of the soil. He did not foresee English parlia- 
ments elected in 1885 and 1886 by a suffrage not 
very far from universal, or a royal jubilee cele- 
brated by democratic masses, or the prudent con- 
servatism in matters of property of the enfran- 
chised French democracy, — he foresaw none of 
these when he declared that England and France 
could not sustain the weight of universal suffrage ; 
that " the radicals of England, with the force of 
that mighty engine, would at once sweep away the 
property, the laws, and the liberty of that island 
like a deluere." Van Buren distinguished himself 
in the debate. Upon this exciting and paramount 
topic he did not share the temper which possessed 
most of his party. His speech was clear, explicit, 
philosophical, and really statesmanlike. It so im- 
pressed even his adversaries ; and Hammond, one 
of them, declared that he ought for it to be ranked 
" among the most shining orators and able states- 
men of the age."" 

In reading this, or indeed any of the utterances 
of Van Buren where the occasion required distinct- 
ness, it is difficult to find the ground of the charge 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 79 

of " noncommittalism " so incessantly made against 
him. He doubtless refrained from taking sides on 
questions not yet ripe for decision, however clear, 
and whatever may have been his speculative opin- 
ions. But this is the duty of every statesman ; it 
has been the practice of every politician who has 
promoted reform. Van Buren now pointed out 
how completely the events of the forty years past 
had discredited the grave speculative fears of 
Franklin, Hamilton, and Madison as to the result 
of some provisions of the Federal Constitution. 
With Burke he believed experience to be the only 
unerring touchstone. He conclusively showed that 
property had been as safe in those American com- 
munities which had universal suffrage as in the 
few which retained a property qualification ; that 
venality in voting, apprehended from the change, 
already existed in the grossest forms at the parlia- 
mentary elections of England. Going to the truth 
which is at the dynamic source of democratic in- 
stitutions, he told the chancellor that when among 
the masses of America the principles of order and 
good government should yield to principles of an- 
archy and violence and permit attacks on private 
property or an agrarian law, all constitutional pro- 
visions would be idle and unavailing, because they 
would have lost all their force and influence. 
With a true instinct, however. Van Buren wished 
the steps to be taken gradually. He was not yet 
ready, he said, to admit to the suffrage the shifting 
population of cities, held to the government by no 



80 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

other ties than the mere right to vote. He was 
not ready for a really universal suffrage. The 
voter ought, if he did not participate in the gov- 
ernment by paying taxes or performing militia 
duty, to be a man who was a householder with 
some of the elements of stability, with something 
at stake in the communit}^ Although they had 
reached " the verge of universal suffrage," he 
could not with his Democratic friends take the 
" one step beyond ; " he would not cheapen the in- 
valuable right by conferring it with indiscrimina- 
ting hand " on every one, black or white, who 
would be kind enough to condescend to accept it." 
Though a Democrat he was opposed, he said, to 
a " ])recipitate and unexpected prostration of all 
qualifications ; " he looked with dread upon in- 
creasing the voters in New York city from thirteen 
or fourteen thousand to twenty-five thousand, be- 
lieving (curious prediction for a father of the 
Democratic party !) that the increase " would ren- 
der their elections rather a curse than a blessing," 
and " would drive from the polls all sober-minded 
people." 

The universal suffrage then postponed was wisely 
adopted a few years later. Democracy marched 
steadily on ; and Van Buren was willing, proba- 
bly very willing, to be guided by experience. He 
opposed in the convention a proposal supported 
by most of his party to restrict suffrage to white 
citizens, but favored a property qualification foi 
black men, the f250 freehold ownership until then 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 81 

required of white voters. He woull not, he said, 
draw from them a revenue and yet deny them the 
right of suffrage. Twenty-five years later, in 1846, 
nearly three-fourths of the voters of the State re- 
fused equal suffrage to the blacks ; and even in 
1869, six years after the emaneij^ation i^roclama- 
tion, a majority still refused to give them the same 
rights as white men. 

The question of appointments to office was the 
chief topic in the convention. Van Buren, as 
chairman of the committee on this subject, made 
an interesting and able report. It was unani- 
mously agreed that the use of patronage by the 
council of appointment had been a scandal. Only 
a few members voted to retain the council, even if 
it were to be elected by the people. He recom- 
mended that military officers, except the highest, 
be elected by the privates and officers of militia. 
Of the 6663 civil officers whose appointment and 
removal by the council had for twenty years kept 
the State in turmoil, he recommended that 3643, 
being notaries, commissioners, masters and exami- 
ners in chancery, and other lesser officers, should 
be appointed under general laws to be enacted by 
the legislature ; the clerks of courts and district 
attorneys should be appointed by the common pleas 
courts ; mayors and clerks of cities should be ap- 
pointed by their common councils, except in New 
York, where for years afterwards the mayors were 
appointed ; the heads of the state departments 
should be appointed by the legislature ; and all 



82 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

other officers, including surrogates and justices of 
the peace as well as the greater judicial officers, 
should be appointed by the governor upon the 
confirmation of the Senate. Van Buren declared 
himself opposed, here again separating himself 
from many of his party associates, to the popular 
election of any judicial officers, even the justices 
of the peace. Of all this he was long after to be 
reminded as proof of his aristocratic contempt for 
democracy. His recommendations were adopted 
in the main ; although county clerks and sheriffs, 
whom he would have kept appointive, were made 
elective. Upon this question he was in a small 
minority with Chancellor Kent and Rufus King, 
having most of his party friends against him. 
Thus was broken up the enormous political power 
so long wielded at Albany, and the patronage dis- 
tributed through the counties. The change, it was 
supposed, would end a great abuse. It did end the 
concentration of patronage at the capital ; but the 
partisan abuses of patronage were simply trans- 
ferred to the various county seats, to exercise a 
different and wider, though probably a less danger- 
ous, <?orruption. 

The council of revision fell with hardly a friend 
to speak for it. It was one of those checks upon 
popular power of which Federalists had been fond. 
It consisted of the governor with the chancellor 
and the judges of the Supreme Court, and had a 
veto power upon bills passed by the legislature. 
As the chancellor and judges held office during 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 83 

good behavior until they had reached the limit 
of age, the council was almost a chamber of life 
peers. The exercise of its power had provoked 
great animosity. The chief judicial officers of the 
State, judges, and chancellors, to whom men of our 
day look back with a real veneration, had been 
drawn by it into a kind of political warfare, in 
which few of our higher magistrates, though pop- 
ularly elected and for terms, would dare to engage. 
An act had been passed by the legislature in 1814 
to promote privateering ; but Chancellor Kent as a 
member of the council objected to it. Van Buren 
maintained with him an open and heated discussion 
upon the propriety of the objections, — a discussion 
in which the judicial character justly enough af- 
forded no protection. Van Buren's feeling against 
the judges who were his political adversaries was 
often exhibited. He said in the convention : " I 
object to the council, as being composed of the 
judiciary, who are not directly responsible to the 
people. I object to it because it inevitably con- 
nects the judiciary — those who, with pure hearts 
and sound heads, should preside in the sanctuaries 
of justice — with the intrigues and collisions of 
party strife ; because it tends to make our judges 
politicians, and because such has been its practical 
effect." He further said that he woukl not join in 
the rather courtly observation that the council was 
abolished because of a personal regard for tlie 
peace of its members. He would have it exjiressly 
remembered that the council had served the ends 



84 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

of faction ; though he added that he should regard 
the loss of Chancellor Kent from his judicial sta- 
tion as a public calamity. In his general position 
Van Buren was clearly right. Again and again 
have theorists, supposing judges to be sanctified 
and illumined by their offices, placed in their hands 
political power, which had been abused, or it was 
feared would be abused, by men fancied to occupy 
less exalted stations. Aoain and aoain has the re- 
suit shown that judges are only men, with human 
passions, prejudices, and ignorance ; men who, if 
vested with functions not judicial, if freed from the 
checks of precedents and law and public hearings 
and appellate review, fall into the same abuses and 
act on the same motives, political and j^ersonaL 
which belong to other men. In the council of re- 
vision before 1821 and the electoral commission o^ 
1877 were signally proved the wisdom of restrict- 
ing judges to the work of deciding rights between 
parties judicially brought before them. 

Van Buren's far from " non-committar' talk 
about the judges was not followed by any support 
of the proposal to " constitution ize " them out or 
office. The animosity of a majority of the mem- 
bers against the judges then in office was intense ; 
and they were not willing to accept the life of the 
council of revision as a sufficient sacrifice. Nor 
was the animosity entirely unreasonable. Butler, 
in one of his early letters to Jesse Hoyt, described 
the austerity with which Ambrose Spencer, the 
chief justice, when the young lawyer sought to 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 85 

address him, told him to wait until his seniors had 
been heard. In the convention there were doubt- 
less many who had been offended with a cei-taiii 
insolence of place which to this day characterizes 
the bearing of many judges of real ability ; and 
the opportunity of making repayment was eagerly 
seized. Nor was it unreasonable tliat laymen 
should, from the proceedings of judges when act- 
ing upon political matters which laymen understood 
as well as they, make inferences about the fairness 
of their proceedings on the bench upon which lay- 
men could not always safely speak. By a vote of 
66 to 39, the convention refused to retain the 
judges then in office, — a proceeding which, with 
all the faults justly or even naturally found with 
them, was a gross violation of the fundamental 
rule which ought to guide civilized lands in chan- 
ging their laws. For the retention of the judges 
was perfectly consistent with the judicial scheme 
adopted. Van Buren put all this most admirably 
before voting with the minority. He told the con- 
vention, and doubtless truly, that from the bench 
of judges, whose official fate was then at their 
mercy, he had been assailed '•'' with hostility, politi- 
cal, professional, and personal, — hostility which 
had been the most keen, activ^e, and unyielding ; " 
but that he would not indulge individual resent- 
ment in the prostration of his private and political 
adversary. The judicial officer, who could not be 
reached by impeachment or the proceeding for 
lemoval by a two- thirds vote, ought not to be dis* 



86 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

turbed. They should amend the constitution, he 
told the convention, upon general principles, and 
not descend to pull down obnoxious officers. He 
begged it not to ruin its character and credit ty 
proceeding to such extremities. But the removal 
of the judges did not prove unpopular. Only 
eight members of the convention voted against the 
Constitution ; only fifteen others did not sign it. 
And the freeholders of the State, while deliberately 
surrendering some of their exclusive privileges, 
adopted it by a vote of 75,422 to 41,497. 

Van Buren's service in this convention was that 
of a firm, sensible, far-seeing man, resolute to make 
democratic progress, but unwilling, without fur- 
ther light from experience, to take extreme steps 
difficult to retrace. With a strong inclination to- 
wards great enlargement of the suffrage, he pointed 
out that a mistake in going too far could never be 
righted "except by the sword." The wisdom of 
enduring temporary difficulties, rather than to 
make theoretical changes greater than were neces- 
sary to obviate serious and great wrongs, was com- 
mon to him with the highest and most influential 
type of modern law-makers. With some men of 
the first rank, the convention had in it very many 
others crudely equipped for its work ; and it met 
in an atmosphere of personal and political asperity 
unfavorable to deliberations over organic lav/. 
Van Buren was politically its most powerful mem- 
ber. It is clear that liis always conservative tern' 
per, aided by his tact and by his temperate and 



CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION 87 

persuasive eloquence, held back his Democratic 
associates, headed by the impetuous and angered 
General Root, from changes far more radical than 
those which were made. Though eminent as a 
party man, he showed on this conspicuous field 
undoubted courage and independence and high 
sense of duty. Entering national politics he was 
fortunate therefore to be known, not only as a 
skillful and adroit and even managing politician, 
as a vigorous and clear debater, as a successful 
leader in popular movements, but also as a man of 
firm and upright patriotism, with a ripe and edu- 
cated sense of the complexity of popular sfovern- 
ment, and a sober appreciation of the kind of 
dangers so subtly mingled with the blessings of 
democracy. 



CHAPTER IV 

CTNTTED STATES SENATOR. REESTABLISHMENl 

OP PARTIES. PARTY LEADERSHIP 

.In December, 1821, Van Buren took his seat in 
the United States Senate. Tne " era of good feel- 
ing " was then at its height. It was with perfect 
sincerity that Monroe in his message of the preced- 
ing year had said : "I see much canse to rejoice in 
the felicity of our situation." He had just been 
reelected president with but a single vote against 
him. The country was in profound peace. The 
burdens of the war witli England were no longer 
felt ; and its few victories were remembered with 
exuberant good-nature. Two years before, Florida 
had been acquired by the strong and persisting 
hand of the younger Adams. Wealth and comfort 
were in rapid increase. The moans and rage of the 
defeated and disgraced Federalists were suppressed, 
or, if now and then feebly heard, were complacently 
treated as outbursts of senility and impotence. 
People were not only well-to-do in fact, but, what 
was far more extraordinary, they believed them- 
selves to be so. In his great tariff speech but three 
or fonr years later, Hayne called it the " period of 
general jubilee." Every great public paper and 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 89 

speech described the " felicity " of America. The 
president pointed out to his fellow-citizens '' the 
prosperous and happy condition of our country in 
all the great circumstances which constitute the 
felicity of a nation ; " he told them that they were 
^' a free, virtuous, and enlightened people ; " the 
unanimity of public sentiment in favor of his 
" humble pretensions " indicated, he thought, ''the 
great strength and stability of our Union." And 
all was recij^rocated by the people. This modest, 
gentle ruler was in his very mediocrity agreeable 
to them. He symbolized the comfort and order, the 
supreme respectability of which they were proua. 
When in 1817 he made a tour throug-h New Eno- 

O CD 

land, which had seen neither Jefferson nor Madison 
as visitors during their terms of office, and in his 
military coat of domestic manufacture, his light 
small-clothes and cocked hat, met processions and 
orators without end, it was obvious that this was 
not the radical minister whom Washinoton had re- 
called from Jacobin Paris for effusively pledging 
eternal friendship and submitting to fraternal em- 
braces in the National Convention. Such youthful 
frenzy was now long past. America was enjoying^ 
a great national idyl. Even the Federalists, except 
of course those who had been too violent or who 
were still unrepentant, were not utterly shut out 
from the light of the placid high noon, Jackson 
had urged Monroe in 1816 ''to exterminate that 
monster called party spirit," and to let some Fed- 
eralists come to the board. Monroe thought, how 



90 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ever, " that the administration should rest strongly 
on the Republican party," tliough meaning to bring 
all citizens '' into tlie Kepubliean fold as quietly as 
possible." Party, he declared, was unnecessary to 
free government ; all should be Republicans. And 
when Van Buren reached the sprawling, slatternly 
American capital in 1821, all were Republicans. 

There were of course personal feuds in this great 
political family. Those of New York were the 
most notorious ; but there were many others. But 
such rivalries and quarrels were only a proof of the 
political calm. When families are smuj^ly prosper- 
ous they indulge petty dislikes, which disappear 
before storm or tragedy. Tlie halc^^on days could 
not last. Monroe's dream of a country with but 
one party, and that basking in perpetual " felicity," 
was, in spite of what seemed for the moment a close 
realization, as far from the truth as the dreams of 
later reformers who would in politics organize all 
the honest, respectable folk together against all the 
dishonest. 

The heat of the Missouri question was ended at 
the session before Van Buren's senatorial term be- 
gan. It seemed only a thunder-storm i)assing across 
a rich, warm day in harvest time, angry and agi- 
tating for the moment, but quickly forgotten by 
dwellers in the pastoral scene when the rainbow of 
compromise appeared in the delightful hues of 
Henry Clay's eloquence. The elements of the tre- 
mendous struggle yet to come were in the atmo- 
sphere, but they were not visible. The slavery 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 91 

question had no political importance to Van Buren 
until fourteen years afterwards. In judging the 
men of that day we shall seriously mistake if we 
set up our own standards among their ideas. The 
moral growth in the twenty-five years since the 
emancipation makes it irksome to be fair to the 
views of the past generation, or indeed to the former 
views of half of our present generation. Slavery 
has come to seem intrinsically wicked, hideous, to 
be hated everywhere. But sixty-five years ago it 
still lingered in several of the Northern States. It 
was wrong indeed ; but the temper of condemnation 
towards it was Platonic, full of the unavailing and 
uiipoignant regret with which men hear of poverty 
and starvation and disease and crime which they 
do not see and which they cannot help. Nor did 
slavery then seem to the best of men so very great 
a wrong even to the blacks ; there were, it was 
thought, many ameliorations and compensations. 
Men were glad to believe and did believe that the 
human chattels were better and happier than they 
would have been in Africa. The economic waste 
of slavery, its corrupting and enervating effect upon 
the whites, were thought to be objections quite as 
serious. Besides, it was widely fancied to be at 
worst but a temporary evil. Jefferson's dislike of 
it was shared by many throughout the South as well 
as the North. The advantages of a free soil were 
becoming so apparent in the strides by which the 
North was passing the South in every material ad- 
vantage, that the latter, it seemed, must surely learn 



92 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the lesson. For the institution within States already 
admitted to the Union, anti-slavery men felt no re- 
sponsibility. Forty years later the great leader of 
the modern Republican party would not, he sol- 
emnly declared in the very midst of a pro-slavery 
rebellion, interfere with slavery in the States if the 
Union could be saved without disturbing it. If men 
in South Carolina cared to maintain a ruinous and 
corrupting domestic institution, even if it were a 
Sfreater wrono- against the slaves than it was believed 
to be, or even if it were an injury to the whites 
themselves, still men of Massachusetts and New 
York ought, it seemed to them, to be no more dis- 
turbed over it than we feel bound to be over poly- 
gamy in Turkey. 

But as to the territory west of the Mississippi 
not yet formed into States, there was a diiferent 
sentiment held by a great majority at the North 
and by many at the South. Slavery was not es- 
tablished there. The land was national domain, 
whose forms of political and social life were yet to 
be set up. Why not, before the embarrassments 
of slave settlement arose, devote this new land to 
freedom, — not so much to freedom as that shining 
goddess of mercy and right and justice who rose 
clear and obvious to our purged vision out of the 
civil war, as to the less noble deities of economic 
well-being, thrift, and industrial comfovt? Demo- 
crats at the North, therefore, were almost unani- 
mous that Missouri should come in free or not at 
all ; and so with the rest of the territory beyond 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 93 

the Mississippi, except the old slave settlement of 
Louisiana, already admitted as a State. The reso- 
lution in the legislature of New York in January, 
1820, supported by Van Buren, that freedom be 
"an indispensable condition of admission" of new 
States, was but one of many exhibitions of feeling 
at the North. Monroe and the very best of Amer 
icans did not, howevei-, think the principle so sacred 
or necessary as to justify a struggle. John Quincy 
Adams, hating slavery as did but few Americans, 
distinctly favored the compromise by which Mis- 
souri came in with slavery, and by which the other 
new territory north of the present southern line of 
Missouri extended westward was to be free, and the 
territory south of it slave. With no shame he ac- 
quiesced in the very thing about which forty years 
later the nation plunged into war. " For the pre- 
sent," he wrote, '' this contest is laid asleep." So 
the stream of peaceful sunshine and prosperity re- 
turned over the land. 

Van Buren's views at this time were doubtless 
clear against the extension of slavery. He disliked 
the institution ; and in part saw how inconsistent 
were its odious practices with the best civic growth, 
how debasing to whites and blacks alike. In 
March, 1822, he voted in the Senate, with Harrison 
Gray Otis of Massachusetts and Rufus King, foi 
a proviso in the bill creating the new Territory of 
Florida by which the introduction of slaves was 
forbidden except by citizens removing there for 
actual settlement, and by which j^laves introduced 



94 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

in violation of the law were to be freed. But he 
was in a minority. Northern senators from Khode 
Island, New Jersey, and Indiana refused to inter- 
fere with free trade in slaves between the Southern 
States and this southernmost territory. 

Among; tlie fortv-eight members of the Senate 
which met in December, 1821, neither Clay nor 
Callioun nor Webster had a seat. The first was 
restless in one of his brief absences from official 
life ; the second was secretary of war ; and Web- 
ster, out of Congress, was making great law argu- 
ments and greater orations. Benton was there 
from the new State of Missouri, just beginning his 
thirty years. The warm friendship and political 
alliance between him and Van Buren must have 
soon begun. During all or nearly all Van Buren's 
senatorship the two occupied adjoiuing seats. Two 
years later Andrew Jackson was sent to the Senate 
by Tennessee, as a suitable preliminary to his pre- 
sidential canvass. During the next two sessions 
Van Buren, Benton, and Jackson were thrown 
together : and without doubt the foundations were 
laid of their lifelong intimacy and political affec- 
tion. Benton and Jackson, personal enemies years 
before, had become reconciled. Among these asso- 
ciates Van Buren adhered firmly enough to his 
own clear views ; he did not turn obsequiously to 
the rising sun of Tennessee. William H. Craw- 
ford, the secretary of the treasury, had, in the 
Republican congressional caucus of 1816, stood 
next Monroe for the presidential nomination. For 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 95 

reasons which neither history nor tradition seems 
sufficiently to have brought us, he inspired a strong 
and even enthusiastic loyalty among many of his 
party. His candidacy in 1824 was more " regular " 
than that of either Adams, Jackson, or Clay, whose ' 
friends combined against him as the strongest' 
of them all. Though Crawford had been pros- 
trated by serious disease in 1823, Van Buren re- 
mained faithful to him until, in 1825, after refusing 
a seat in Adams's cabinet, he retired from national 
public life a thoroughly broken man. 

The first two sessions of Congress, after Van 
Buren's service began, seemed drowsy enough. 
French land-titles in Louisiana, the settlement of 
the accounts of public officers, the attempt to abol- 
ish imprisonment for debt, the appropriation for 
money for diplomatic representatives to the new 
South American states and their recognition, — 
nothing more exciting than these arose, except 
Monroe's veto, in May, 1822, of the bill author- 
izing the erection of toll-gates upon the Cumber- 
land road and appropriating $^9000 for them. 
This brought distinctly before the public the great 
question of internal improvements by the federal 
government, which Van Buren, Benton, and Jack- 
son afterwards chose as one of the chief battle- 
grounds for their party. For this bill Van Buren 
indeed voted, while Benton afterwards boasted that 
he was one of the small minority of seven who dis- 
cerned its true character. But this trifling appro- 
priation was declared by Barbour, who was in 



06 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

charge of the measure, not to involve the general 
question ; it was said to be a mere incident neces- 
sary to save from destruction a work for which 
earlier statesmen were responsible. Monroe, though 
declaring in his veto that the power to adopt and 
execute a system of internal improvements national 
in their character would have the happiest effect on 
all the great interests of the Union, decided that 
the Constitution gave no such power. Six years 
later, in a note to his speech upon the power of the 
Vice-President to call to order for words spoken in 
debate in the Senate, Van Buren apologized for his 
vote on the bill, because it was his first session, and 
because he was sincerely desirous to aid the West- 
ern country and had voted without full examina- 
tion. He added that if the question were again 
pi'esented to him, he should vote in the negative ; 
and that it had been his only vote in seven years 
of service which the most fastidious critic could 
torture into an inconsistency with his principles 
upon internal improvements. In January, 1823, 
during his second session. Van Buren spoke and 
voted in favor of the bill to repair the road, but 
still took no decided ground upon the general 
question. He said that the large expenditure al- 
ready made on the road would have been worse 
than useless if it were now suffered to decay ; that 
the road, being already constructed, ought to be 
preserved ; but whether he would vote for a new 
construction he did not disclose. Even Benton, 
who was proud to have been one of the small 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 97 

minority against the bill of tlie year before for toll- 
gates upon the road, was now with Van Buren^ 
constitutional scruples yielding to the statesman- 
like reluctance to waste an investment of millions 
of dollars rather than spend a few thousands tc 
save it. 

In January, 1824, Van Buren proposed to solve 
these difficulties by a constitutional amendment. 
Congress was to have power to make roads and 
canals, but the money appropriated was to be ap- 
portioned among the States according to popula- 
tion. No road or canal was to be made within any 
State without the consent of its legislature ; and 
the money was to be expended in each State under 
the direction of its legislature. This proposal 
seems to have fallen still-born and deservedly. It 
illustrated Van Buren's jealousy of interference 
with the rights of States. But the right of each 
State to be protected, he seemed to forget, involved 
its right not to be taxed for improvements in other 
States which it neither controlled nor promoted. 
Van Buren's speech in support of the proposal 
would to-day seem very heretical to his party. A 
dozen years later he himself would probably have 
admitted it to be so. He then believed in the 
abstract proposition that such funds of the nation 
as could be raised without oppression, and as were 
not necessary to the discharge of indispensable 
demands u})on the government, should be expended 
upon internal improvements under restrictions 
guarding the sovereignty and equal interests of the 



98 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

States. Henry Clay would not in theory have gone 
much further. But to this subject in its national 
aspect Van Buren had probably given but slight 
attention. The success of the Erie Caual, with 
him doubtless as with others, made adverse theories 
of government seem less impressive. But Van 
Buren and his school quickly became doubtful and 
soon hostile to the federal promotion of internal 
improvements. The opposition became popular on 
the broader reasoning that great expenditures for 
internal improvements within the States were not 
only, as the statesmen at first argued, violations 
of the letter of the Constitution, whose sanctity 
could, however, be saved by proper amendment, 
but were intrinsically dangerous, and an unwhole- 
some extension of the federal power which ought 
not to take place whether within the Consti- 
tution or by amending it. Aided by Jackson's 
powerful vetoes, this sentiment gained a strength 
with the people which has come down to our day. 
We have river and harbor bills, but they are sup- 
posed to touch directly or indirectly our foreign 
commerce, which, under the Constitution and upon 
the essential theory of our confederation, is a sub- 
ject proper to the care of the Union. 

In the same session Van Buren spoke at length 
in favor of the bill to abolish imprisonment for 
debt, and drew with precision the distinction wisely 
established by modern jurisprudence, that the pro- 
perty only, and not the body of the debtor, should 
be at the mercy of his creditor, where the debt in^ 
solved no fraud Qi* breach of trust. 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 09 

The session of 1823-1824 was seriously influ- 
enced by the coming- presidential election. The 
protective tariff of 1824 was christened with the 
absurd name of the " American system," though 'i\i 
was American in no other or better sense than for- 
eign war to protect fancied national rights is an 
American system, and though the system had come 
from the middle ages in the company of other re- 
strictions upon the intercourse of nations. It was 
carried by the factitious help of this designation 
and the fine leadership of Clay. With Jackson 
and Benton, Van Buren voted for it, against men 
differing as widely from each other as his associate, 
the venerable Federalist Bufus King, differed from 
Hayne, the brilliant orator of South Carolina. 
Upon the tariff Van Bui'en then had views clearer, 
at least, than upon internal improvements. In 
1824 he was unmistakably a protectionist. The 
moderation of his views and the pressure from his 
own State were afterwards set up as defenses for 
this early attitude of his. But he declared himself 
with sufficient plainness not only to believe in the 
constitutionality of a protective tariff, but that 1824 
was a fit year in which to extend its protective 
features. He acted, too, with the amplest light upon 
the subject. The dislike of the Holy Alliance, the 
hated recollections of the Orders in Council and 
the Napoleonic decrees, the idea that, for self- 
defense in times of w^ar, the country must be forced 
to produce many goods not already produced,— 
these considerations had great weight, as very well 



too MARTIN VAN BUREN 

appears in the speech for the bill delivered by 
Kichard M. Johnson of Kentucky, afterward? 
Van Buren's associate on the presidential ticket. 
" When the monarchs of Europe are assembled 
together, do you thiik," he asked, ''that we are 
not a subject of their holy consultations ? " Siit 
the support of the bill was upon broader considera^ 
tions. The debates upon the tariff in the House 
of Representatives in February, March, and April, 
and in the Senate in April, 1824, were adinirnMe 
presentations of the subject. \Vebs:er in iUe 
House and Hayne in the Senate put the f\Te 
trade side. The former, still speaking his -own 
sentiments, declared that '^ the best apology for laws 
of ])rohibition and laws of monopoly will be found 
in that state of society, not only unenlightened bur. 
iiluggish, in which they are most generally estab- 
lished." But now, he said, '' competition comes in 
place of monopoly, and intelligence and industry 
ask only for fair play and an open field." He 
repudiated the principle of protection. " On the 
contrary," said he, '' I think freedom of trade to 
be the general principle, and restriction the excep- 
tion." 

Nor was Van Buren then left without the light 
which afterwards i cached him on the constitutional 
question. Rufas King said that, if gentlemen 
wished to encourage the production of hemp and 
iron, they ought to bring in a bill to give bounties 
on those articles ; for there was the same constitu- 
tional right to grant bounties as to levy restrictive 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 101 

duties upon foreign products. Hayne made the 
really eloquent and masterly speech for which he 
ouofht to stand in the first rank of orators, and 
which summed up as well for free-traders now as 
then the most telling arguments against artificial 
restrictions. He skillfully closed with Washing- 
ton's words : '' Our commercial policy should hold 
an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor 
granting exclusive favors or preferences ; consult- 
ing the natural course of things; diffusing and 
diversifying by gentle means the streams of com- 
merce, but forcing nothing." Hayne did not con- 
fine himself to the doctrines of Adam Smith, of 
the hardships which protection meant to a planting 
region like his own. For the chief interest of the 
South was in cotton ; and the price of cotton was 
largely determined by the ability of foreigners to 
import it from America, — an ability in its turn 
dependent upon the willingness of America to take 
her pay, directly or indirectly, in foreign commodi- 
ties. Hayne, however, went further. He clearly 
raised the question, whether the encouragement of 
manufactures could constitutionally be made a 
Federal object. 

Sitting day after day under this long debate in 
the little senate chamber then in use, where men 
listened to speeches, if for no other reason, because 
they were easily heard. Van Buren could not, with 
his ability and i-eadiness, have misunderstood the 
general principles involved. Early in the debate, 
upon a motion to strike out the duty on hemp, he 



102 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

briefly but explicitly said that " he was in favor of 
increasing the duty on hemp, with a view of afford 
ing protection to its cultivation in this country.' 
He voted against limiting the duty on wool to 
twenty-five! per cent., but voted against a duty of 
twenty-five Y>er cent, on India silks, — a revenue 
i-ather than a protective duty. He voted for duties 
on wheat and wheat flour and potatoes. He voted 
against striking out the duty on books, in spite of 
Hayne's grotesque but forcible argument that they 
were to be considered " a raw material, essential to 
the formation of the mind, the morals, and the 
character of the people," It is difficult to under- 
stand the significance of all Van Buren's votes on 
the items of the bill; but the i-ecord shows them 
to have been, on the whole, protectionist, with a 
preference for moderate rates, but a firm assertion 
of the wool interests of New York, Benton tells 
us that Van Buren was one of the main speakers 
for the bill ; but the assertion is not borne out by 
the record. He delivered no general speech upon 
the subject, as did most of the senators, but seems 
to have spoken only upon some of the details as 
they were considered in committee of the whole. 
The best to be said in Van Buren's behalf is, that 
his judgment was not yet so ripe upon the matter 
as not to be still open to great change. He was in 
his third session, and still new to national politics, 
and there wjis before him the plain and strong 
argument that his State wanted protection. In 
1835 Butler, speaking for him as a presidential 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 103 

candidate, said that his personal feelings had been 
" at all times adverse to the high tariff policy." 
But " high tariff " was then, as now, a merely rela- 
tive term. His votes placed him in that year very 
near Henry Chiy. Tiiat from 1824 he grew more 
and more averse to the necessary details and results 
of a protective policy is probably true. Nor ought 
it to be, even from the standpoint of free-traders^ 
serious accusation that a public man varies his 
political utterances upon the tariff question, if the 
variation be progressive and steadily towards what 
they deem a greater liberality. To Van Buren, 
however, the tariff question never had a capital 
importance. Even thirty-two years later, while 
rehearsing from his retirement the achievements of 
his party in excuse of the support he reluctantly 
gave Buchanan, he did not name among its ser- 
vices its insistence upon merely revenue duties, 
although he had then for years been himself com- 
mitted to that doctrine. 

Van Buren's vote for the tariff of 1824 had no 
very direct relation to his political situation. His 
own successor was not to be chosen for nearly three 
years. Crawford, whom he supported for the presi- 
dency, was the only one of the four candidates 
opposed to the bill. Adams was consistently a 
protectionist ; he believed in actively promoting 
the welfare of men, though chiefly if not exclusive- 
ly American men, even when they resisted their 
own welfare. He, like his father, was perfectly 
ready to use the power of government where it 



i04 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

seemingly promised to be effective, without caring 
much for economical theories or constitutional re- 
strictions. eTackson himself was far enough away 
from the ranks of strict constructionists on the 
tariff. In April, 1824, in the midst of the debate, 
and while a presidential candidate, he wrote from 
the Senate what free-traders, who afterwards sup- 
ported him, would have deemed the worst of her- 
esies. Like most candidates, ancient and modern, 
he was ''in favor of a judicious examination and 
revision of " the tariff. He would advocate a tariff 
so far as it enabled the country to provide itself 
with the means of defense in war. But he would 
go further. The tariff ought to " draw from agri- 
culture the superabundant labor, and employ it in 
mechanism and manufactures ; " it ought to '' give 
a proper distribution to our labor, to take from 
a2"riculture in the United States 600,000 men, wo- 
men, and children." It is thne, he cried, and quite 
as extravagantly as Clay, that " we should become 
a little more Americanized." How slight a con- 
nection the tariff had with the election of 1824 is 
further seen in the fact that Jackson, who thus 
supported the bill, received the vote of several of 
the States which strongly opposed the tariff. 

In March, 1824, Van Buren urged the Senate to 
act upon a constitutional amendment touching the 
election of president. As the amendment could 
not be adopted in time to affect the pending can- 
vass, there was, he said, no room for partisan feel- 
ing. He insisted that if there were no majority 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 105 

choice by the electors, the choice should not rest 
with the house of representatives voting by Stiites, 
but that the electors should be reconvened, and 
themselves choose between the highest two can- 
didates. The debate soon became thoroughly par- 
tisan. E-ufus King, with but thinly veiled re- 
ference to Crawford's nomination, denounced the 
practice by which a caucus at Washington deprived 
the constitutional electors of any free choice ; mem- 
bers of Congress were attending to president-mak- 
ing rather than to their duties. He thought that 
the course of events had '•'"led near observers ti> 
suspect a connection existing between a central 
power of this description at the seat of the general 
government and the legislatures of Georgia, North 
Carolina, Virginia, and New York, and perhaps of 
other States." To this it was pointed out with 
much force that such a ftaqcus had chosen Jeffer- 
son, Madison, and Monroe without scandal or in- 
jury ; that members of Congress were distinguished 
and representative persons familiar with national 
affairs, who might with great advantage respect- 
fully suggest a course of action to their fellow- 
citizens. Van Buren went keenly to the real point 
of the belated objection to the system ; it lay in 
the particular action of the recent caucus. He did 
not think it worth while to consider '"'' those nice 
distinctions which challenged respect for the pro- 
ceedings of conventions of one description anci 
denied it to others ; or to detect those still more 
subtle refinements which regarded meetings of tnu 



106 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

same character as sometimes proper, and at others 
destructive of the purity of electious and dangerous 
to the liberties of the people." After much talk 
about the will of the people, tlie Senate by a vote 
of 30 to 13 postponed the consideration of the 
amendments until after the election. Benton 
joined Van Buren in the minority, although they 
did not agree upon the form of amendment ; but 
Jackson, perhaps because he was a candidate, did 
not vote. 

It was highly probable that there would be em- 
barrassment in choosing the next president. It 
was already nearly certain that neither candidate 
would have a majority of the electoral votes. The 
decision was then, as in our own time, supposed to 
rest with New York ; and naturally therefore Van 
Buren's prestige was great, gained, as it had been, 
in that difficult and opulent political field. His 
attachment to Crawford was proof against the signs 
of the latter's decaying strength. Crawford was 
to him the Republican candidate regularly chosen, 
and one agreeable to his party by the vigorous 
democracy of his sentiments. His opposition to 
Jefferson's embargo, and his vote for a renewal of 
the charter of the Bank of the United States, had 
been forgotten since his warm advocacy of the late 
war with En<>land. His formal claims to the nomi- 
nation were great. For he had been in the Senate 
as early as 1807, and its president upon the death 
of Vice-President Clinton in 1812 ; afterwards he 
had been minister to France, and was now secretary 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 107 

of the treasury. In the caucus of 1816 he had 
nearly as many votes as Monroe ; and those votest 
were cast for him, it was said, though without 
much probability, in spite of his peremptory refusal 
to compete with Monroe. Moreover, Crawford had 
a majesty and grace of personal appearance which, 
with undoubtedly good though not great abilities, 
had, apart from these details of his career, made 
him conspicuous in the Republican ranks ; and in 
its chief service he was, after the retirement of 
Monroe, the senior, except Adams, wliose candidacy 
was far more recent. Crawford's claim to the suc- 
cession was therefore very justifiable ; he was the 
most obvious, the most " regular," of the candi- 
dates. 

It has been said that Van Buren was at first 
inclined to Adams. The latter's unequaled 2:)ublic 
ex])erience and discipline of intellect doubtless 
seemed, to Van Buren's precise and orderly mind, 
eminent qualifications for the first office in the land. 
Adams at this time, by a coincidence not inexpli- 
cable, thought highly of Van Buren. He entered 
in his diary a remark of his own, in February, 
1825, that Van Buren v/as "a man of great talents 
and of good principles ; but he had suffered them 
to be too much warped by party spirit." This 
from an Adams may be taken as extreme praise. 
It is pretty certain that if Van Buren had repre- 
hensibly shifted his position from Adams to Craw- 
ford, we should find a record of it in the vast 
fcreasure-house of damnations which Adams left. 



108 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Nor is there good reason to suppose that Van Buren 
was influenced by the nomination which Craw- 
ford's friends in Georgia gave him in 1824 for the 
vice-presidency. This showed that New York had 
already surrendered her favorite " son to the na- 
tion ; " he was now definitely to be counted a power 
in national politics, where he was known as the 
" Albany director." Crawford's enemies in Geor- 
gia, the Clarkites, ridiculed this nomination with 
the coarse and silly abuse which active politicians 
to this day are always ready to use in their cynical 
under-estimate of popular intelligence, — abuse 
which they are by and by pretty sure to be glad to 
forget. Van Buren was pictured as half man and 
half cat, half fox and half monkey, half snake and 
half mink. He was dubbed ''* Blue Whiskey Van " 
and " Little Van." The Clarkites, being only a 
minority in the Georgia Assembly, delighted to 
vote for him as their standing candidate for door- 
kee}3er and the like humbler positions. 

New York was srreatlv disturbed through 1824 
over the presidency. Its politics were in the posi- 
tion described by Senator Cobb, one of Crawford's 
Georgia supporters. " Could we hit upon a few 
great principles," he wrote home from Washington 
in Jannary, 1825, *' and unite their support with 
that of Crawford, we should succeed beyond 
doubt." But the great principles were hard to 
find. The people and the greater politicians were 
therefore swayed by personal preferences, with- 
out strong reason for either choice ; and the lesser 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 109 

politicians were simply watching to see how the tide 
ran. Adams was the most natural choice of the 
New York Republicans. The South had had the 
presidenijy for six terms. His early secession from 
the Federalists; liis aid in solidifying the Repub- 
lican sentiment at the North ; his support of eTeffer- 
son in the patriotic embargo struggle ; his long, 
eminent, and fruitful services; and his place of 
secretary of state, from which Madison and Monroe 
had in turn been promoted to the presidency, — 
all these commended him to Northern Republicans 
as a proper candidate. 

De Witt Clinton admired and supported General 
Jackson. In 1819 the latter had at a dinner in 
Tammany Hall amazed and affronted the former's 
Bncktail enemies by giving as his toast, " De Witt 
Clinton, the enlightened statesman and governor 
of the great and patriotic State of New York." In 
January, 1824, Clinton was the victim of a political 
outrage which illustrated the harsh partisanship 
then ruling in New York politics, and may well 
have determined the choice of president. Clinton 
had retired from the governor's chair ; but he still 
held the honorary and unpaid office of canal com- 
missioner, to vi^hich he brought distinguished honor 
but which brought none to him, and whose import- 
ance he more than any other man had created. 
The Crawford men in the legislature feared a com- 
bination of the men of the new People's party 
with the Clintonians on the presidential question. 
Clinton seemed at the time an unpopular characteR 



110 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

To embarrass the People's party, Clinton's ene- 
mies suddenly, and just before the rising of the 
legislature, offered a resolution removing him from 
the canal commissionership. The People's party, 
it was thought, by opposing the resohition, would 
incur popular dislike through their alliance with the 
few and unpopular Clintonians ; while by support- 
ing the resolution they would forfeit the support 
of the latter upon which they relied. In either 
case the Crawford men would apparently profit by 
the trick. The People's party men, including those 
favoring Adams for president, at once seized the 
wrong horn of the dilemma, and voted for Clinton's 
removal, which was thus carried by an almost 
unanimous vote. But the people themselves were 
underrated ; the outrage promptly restored Clinton 
to popular favor. In spite of the resistance of the 
politicians, he was, in the fall of 1824, elected by 
a large majority to the governor's seat, to which, 
or to any great office, it had been supposed he 
could never return ; and this, although at the same 
time and upon the same ticket one of those who 
had voted for his removal was chosen lieutenant- 
governor. Van Buren was no party to this re- 
moval, although his jiolitical friends at Albany were 
the first movers in the scheme. He himself was 
far-sighted enough to see the probable effect of so 
gross and indecent a use of political power. Nor 
was he so relentless a partisan as to remember in 
unfruitful vengeance Clinton's own prescriptive 
conduct, or to remove the latter from an honorary 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 111 

seat wliich belonged to him above all other men. 
By this silly blunder Clinton was again raised to 
deserved power, which he held until his death. 

The popular outburst consequent upon Clinton's 
removal in January, 1824, made it very dangerous 
for the Bucktails to leave to the people in the fall 
the choice of presidential electors. The rise of the 
People's party for a time seriously threatened Van 
Buren's influence. Until 1824 the presidential 
electors of New York had been chosen by its legisla- 
ture. The opponents of Crawford and Van Buren, 
fearing that the latter's superior political skill 
would more easily capture the legislature in Novem- 
ber, 1824, raised at the legislative elections of 1823 
a cry against the Albany Regency, and demanded 
tliat presidential electors should be chosen directly 
by the people. The Regency, popularly believed 
to have been founded by Van Buren, consisted of 
a few able followers of his, residing or in office at 
Albany. They were also called the '' conspirators.'* 
Chief among them were William L. Marcy, the 
comptroller ; Samuel A. Talcott, the attorney-gen- 
eral ; Benjamin F. Butler, then district attorney 
of Albany county ; Edwin Croswell, the state 
printer ; Roger Skinner, the United States dis- 
trict judge ; and Benjamin Knower, the state trea- 
surer. Later there joined the Regency, Silas 
Wright, Azariah C. Flagg, Thomas W. Olcott, and 
Charles E. Dudley. Its members were active, 
skillful, shrewd politicians ; and they were much 
more. They were men of strong political convic* 



112 . MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tions, holding and observing a high standard for 
the public service, and of imdoiibted personal in- 
tegrity. In 1830 John A. Dix gave as a chief rea- 
son for accepting office at Albany that he should 
there be *' one of the Regency." His son, Dr. 
Morgan Dix, describes their aggressive honesty, 
their refusal *•' to tolerate in those whom they could 
control what their own fine sense of honor did not 
approve ; " and he quotes a remark made to him 
by Thurlovv Weed, their long and most formidable 
enemy, *' that he had never known a body of men 
who possessed so much power and used it so well." 
In his Memoirs, Weed describes their '' great abil- 
ity, great industry, indomitable courage." Two 
at least of the original members, Marcy and But- 
ler, afterwards justly rose to national distinction. 
Even to our own day, the Albany Regency has 
been a strong and generally a sagacious influence 
in its party. John A. Dix, Horatio Seymour, 
Dean Richmond, and Samuel J. Tilden long di- 
rected its policy ; and from the chief seat in its 
councils the late secretary of the treasury, Daniel 
Manning, was chosen in 1885. 

In Noveml>er, 1828, the People's party elected 
only a minority of the legislature : but many of the 
Democrats were committed to the support of an 
electoral law, and the movement was clearly popu- 
lar. A just, though possibly an insufficient objec- 
tion to the law was its proposal of a great change 
in anticipation of a particular election whose can- 
didates w^ere already before tlie public. But there 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 113 

was no resort to frank argument. Its indirect de- 
feat was proposed by the Democratic managers, 
and accomplished with the cooperation of many- 
supporters of Adams and Clay. A bill was re- 
ported in the Assembly, where the Regency was in 
a minority, giving the choice of the electors to the 
people directly, but cunningly requiring a majority 
instead of a plurality vote to elect. If there were 
no majority, then the choice was to be left to the 
legislature. The Adams and Clay men were un- 
willing to let a plurality elect, lest in the uncertain 
state of public feeling some other candidate might 
be at the head of the pall ; and they were probably 
now quite as confident as the Bucktails, and with 
more reason, of their strength upon joint ballot in 
the legislature. Divided as the people of New 
York were between the four presidential candi- 
dates, it was well known that this device would 
really give them no choice. The consideration of 
the electoral law was postponed in the Senate upon 
a pretense of objection to the form of the bill, and 
with insincere protestations of a desire to pass it. 
The outcome of all this was that in the election of 
November, 1824, the Democrats were punished at 
the polls both for the wanton attack on Clinton 
and for their unprincipled treatment of the elec- 
toral bill. The Regency got no more than a small 
minority in the legislature ; and De AVitt Clinton, 
as has been said, was chosen governor by a great 
majority. 

Crawford's supporters at Washington believed 



114 MARTIN VAX BUREN 

that in a congressional caucus he would have a 
larger vote than any other candidate. His oppo- 
nents, in the same belief, refused to join in a cau- 
cus, in spite of the cry that their refusal was a, 
treason to old ]xirty usage. The Republicans at 
Albany, probably upon Van Buren's advice, had 
in April, 1823, declared in favor of a caucus, but 
without effect. Two thirds of Congress would not 
assent. At last, in February, 1824, a caucus was 
called, doubtless in the hope that many who had re- 
fused their assent would, finding the caucus inevi- 
table, attend through force of party habit. But of 
the 261 members of Congress, only 66 attended ; 
and they were chiefly from New York, Virginia, 
North Carolina and Georgia. In the caucus 62 
voted for Crawford for president and 57 for Albert 
Gallatin for vice-president. A cry was soon 
raised against the latter as a foreigner ; so that in 
spite of his American residence of forty-five years, 
and his invaluable services to the country and to 
the Republican party through nearly all this pe- 
riod, he felt compelled to withdraw. 

The failure of the caucus almost destroyed Craw- 
ford's chances, though Van Buren steadily kept up 
courage. A few days later he wrote a confidential 
letter complaining of the subserviency and ingrati- 
tude of the non-attendants, who had "partaken 
largely of the favor of the party ; " but despond- 
ency, he said, was a weakness with which he was 
but little annoyed, and if New York should be 
firm and promptly explicit, the election would be 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 115 

substantially settled. But New York was neithei 
firm nor promptly explicit. Its electoral vote was 
in doubt until the meeting of the legislature in 
November. The Adams and Clay forces then 
united, securing 31 out of the 36 electors, although 
one of the 31 seems finally to have voted for Jack- 
son. Five Crawford electors were chosen with the 
help of the Adams men, who wished to keep Clay 
at the foot of the poll of presidential electors, and 
thus prevent his eligibility as one of the highest 
three in the House of Representatives. This de- 
vice of the Adams men may have deprived Clay of 
the presidency. Thus Van Bnren's New York 
campaign met defeat even in the legislature, where 
bis friends had incurred odium rather than sur- 
render the choice of electors to the people, while 
his forces were being thoroughly beaten by the 
people at the polls. In the electoral college Craw- 
ford received only 41 votes ; Adams had 84 and 
Jackson 99 ; while Clay with only 37 was fourth in 
the race, and could not therefore enter the contest 
in the House. Georgia cast 9 electoral votes for 
Van Buren as vice-president. 

Van Buren did not figure in the choice of Adams 
in the House by the coalition of Adams and Clay 
forces. Nor does his name appear in the traditions 
of the manoeuvering at Washington in the winter 
of 1824-25, except in a vague and improbable 
story that he wished, by dividing the New York 
delegation in the House on the first vote by States, 
to prevent a choice, and then to throw the votes of 



IIG MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the Crawford members for Adams, and thus secure 
the glory and political profit of apparently electing 
him. He did not join in the cry that Adams's 
election over Jackson was a violation of the demo- 
cratic principle. Nor was it a violation of that 
principle. Jackson had but a minority of the pop- 
ular vote. Clay was in political principles and 
habits nearer to Adams than Jackson. It was 
clearly Clay's dut}^ to take his strength to the can- 
didate wliose administration was most likely to be 
agreeable to those opinions of his own which had 
made him a candidate. The coalition was per- 
fectly natural and legitimate ; and it was whole- 
some in its consequences. It established the Whig 
party ; it at least heljjcd to establish the modern 
Democratic party. That the acceptance of office 
by Clay would injure him was probable enough. 
Coalitions have always been unpopular in America 
and England, when there has seemed to follow a 
division of offices. They offend the strong belief 
in party government which lies deep in the politi- 
cal conscience of the two countries. 

In the congressional session of 1824-25 presi- 
dent-making in the House stood in the way of 
everything else of importance. Van Buren, with 
increasing experience, was taking a greater and 
greater part in congressional work. He joined far 
more frequently in the debates. Again he spoke 
for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, his col- 
league, Rufus King, differing from him on this as 
he now seemed to differ from him on most disjjuted 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 111 

questions. King had not been reelected senator, 
having declined to be a candidate, because, as he 
said, of his advancing years. But doubtlcoS Van 
Buren was correct in telling John Quincy Adams, 
and the latter was correct in believing, as his diary 
records, that Kino' could not have been re-chosen. 

At this session Van Buren took definite stiinj 
against the schemes of internal improvement. On 
February 11, 1825, differing even from Benton, he 
voted against topographical surveys in anticipation 
of public works by the Federal government. On 
February 23 he voted against an appropriation of 
$150,000 to extend the Cumberland road, while 
Jackson and Benton both voted for it. So, also, 
the next day, when Jackson voted for federal sub- 
scriptions to help construct the Delaware and Ches- 
apeake Canal and the Dismal Swamp Canal, Van 
Buren was against him. Two days before the 
session closed he voted against the bill for the 
occupation of Oregon, Benton and Jackson voting 
in the affirmative. Van Buren was one of the sen- 
atorial committee to receive the new president upon 
his inauguration. It was doubtless with the easy 
courtesy which was genuine with him that he wel- 
comed John Quincy Adams to the political battle 
so disastrous to the latter. 

AVhen Congress met again, in December, 1825, 
Van Buren took a more important place than ever 
before in national politics. He now became a true 
parliamentary leader ; for he, like Clay, had the 
really parliamentary career which has rarely been 



118 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

seen in this country. Dealing with amorphous po- 
litical elements, Van Buren created out of them a 
party to promote his policy, and seized upon the 
vigor and popular strength of Jackson to lead both 
party and policy to supreme power. While, before 
1825, Van Buren had not represented in the Senate 
a party distinctly constituted, from 1825 to 1828 
he definitely led the formation of the modern Dem- 
ocratic party. In this work he was clearly chief. 
From the floor of the Senate he addressed those of 
its members inclined to his creed, and the sympa- 
thetic elements throughout the country, and firmly 
guided and disciplined them after that fashion 
which in very modern days is best familiar to us 
in the parliamentary conflicts of Great Britain. 
Since Van Buren wielded this organizing power, 
there has been in America no equally authoritative 
and decisive leadership from the Senate ; although 
he has since been surpassed there, not only as 
an orator, but in other kinds of senatorial work. 
Seward seemed to exercise a like leadership in the 
six years or more j^receding Lincoln's election : but 
he was far more the creature of the stupendous 
movement of the time than he was its creator. So, 
in the two years before General Grant's renomina- 
tion in 1872, Charles Sumner and Carl Schurz, 
speaking from the Senate, created a new party sen- 
timent ; but the sentiment died in a " midsummer 
madness" but for which our later political history 
might have been materially different. In the in- 
teresting and fruitful three years of Van Buren's 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 119 

senatorial opposition, he showed the same qualities 
of firmness, supple tact, and distinct political aims 
which had given him his power in New York ; but 
all now upon a higher plane. 

In December, 1825, Jackson was no longer in 
the Senate. His Tennessee friends had placed him 
there as in a fitting vestibule to the White House ; 
but it seemed as hard then as it has been since, to 
go from the Senate over the apparently broad and 
easy mile to the west on Pennsylvania Avenue. 
So Jackson returned to the Hermitage, to await, 
in the favorite American character of Cincinnatus, 
the popular summons which he believed to be only 
delayed. Van Buren, now thoroughly acquainted 
with the general, saw in him the strongest titular 
leader of the opposition. It is pretty certain, how- 
ever, that Van Buren's preference was recent. The 
" Albany Argus," a Van Buren paper, had but 
lately declared that " Jackson has not a single feel- 
ing in common with the Republican party, and 
makes the merit of desiring the total extinction 
of it ; " while Jackson papers had ridiculed Craw- 
ford's 

" Shallow knaves with f oi-ms to mock us, 
Straggling-, one by one, to caucus." 

It has been the tradition, carefully and doubt- 
less sincerely begun by John Quincy Adams, and 
adopted by most writers dealing with this period, 
that Adams met his first Congress in a spirit which 
should have commanded universal support ; and 
that it was a factious opposition, cunningly led by 



120 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Van Bnren, which thwarted his patriotic purposes. 
But this is an untrue account of the second great 
party division in the United States. The younger 
Adams succeeded to an administration which had 
represented no party, or rather which had repre° 
sented a party now become so dominant as to prac- 
tically include the whole country. As president 
he found himself able to promote opinions with a 
weighty authority which he had not enjoyed while 
secretary of state in an era of good feeling, and 
under a president who was firm, even if gentle. 
Nor was it likely that Adams, with his unrivaled 
experience, his resolute self-reliance, and his ag- 
gressively patriotic feeling, would fail to impress 
his own views upon the public service, lest he might 
disturb a supposititious unanimity of sentiment. 
His first message boldly sounded the notes of party 
division. The second war with England was well 
out of the public mind ; and his old Federalist 
associations, his belief in a strong, active, beneficent 
federal government, his traditional dislike of what 
seemed to him extreme democratic tendencies and 
constitutional refinings away of necessary federal 
power, — all these made him promptly and ably 
take an attitude very different from that of his 
predecessors. The compliment was perfectly sin- 
cere which, in his inaugural address, he had paid 
the Republican and Federa-list parties, saying of 
them that both had " contributed splendid talents, 
spotless integrity, ardent patriotism, and disinter- 
ested sacrifices to the formation and administra- 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 121 

tioTi" of the government. But it was idle for him 
to suj^pose that the successors of these parties, al- 
though from both had come his own supporters, 
and although, as in his offer of the treasury to 
Crawford, he showed his desire, even in tlie chief 
offices, to ignore political differences, would re- 
main united under him, if he espoused causes upon 
which they widely differed. After recapitulating 
the tenets of American political faith, and showing 
that most discordant elements of public opinion 
were now blended into harmony, he was again per- 
fectly sincere in saying that only an effort of mag- 
nanimity needed to be made, that individuals should 
discard every remnant of rancor against each other. 
This advice he was himself unable to follow ; and 
so were other men. In his inaugural he distinctly 
adopted as his own the policy of internal improve- 
ments by the federal government, although he 
knew how wide and determined had been the op- 
position to it. His own late chief, Monroe, had 
pronounced the policy unconstitutional. But he 
DOW told the people that the magnificence and splen- 
dor of the 2)ublic works, the roads and aqueducts, 
of Kome, were among the imperishable splendors 
of the ancient republic. He asked to what single 
individual our first national road had proved an 
injury. Of the constitutional doubts which were 
raised, he said, with a touch of the contempt of a. 
practical administrator : '^ Every spe(iulative scru- 
ple will be solved by a practical blessing." To the 
self-consecrated guardians of the Constitution this 



122 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

was as corrupt as offers of largesses to plebeians at 
Rome. In his first message he recommended again 
the policy of internal improvements, and proposed 
the establishment of a national university. Al- 
though he aduiitted the Constitution to be "a 
charter of limited powers," he still intimated his 
opinion that its powers might '^ be effectually 
brought into action by laws promoting the iuiprove- 
ment of agriculture, commerce, and m*inufactures, 
the cultivation and encouragement of the mechanic 
and of the elegant arts, the advancement of litera- 
ture, and the progress of the sciences, ornamental 
and profound ; " and that to refrain from exercising 
these powers for the benefit of the people them- 
selves, would be to hide the talent in the earth, 
and a " treachery to the most sacred of trusts." 
Further, he now broached the novel project of the 
congress at Panama, — a project surely doubtful 
enough to permit conscientious opposition. 

All this was widely different from the messages 
of content from President Monroe. There was in 
these new utterances a clear political diversion, 
marked not less by the brilliant and restless genius 
of Henry Clay, now the secretary of state, than 
b}^ the President's consciousness of his own strong 
and disciplined ability. Here was a new policy 
formally presented by a new administration ; and 
a formal and organized resistance was as sure to 
follow as effect to follow cause. Van Buren was 
soon at the head of this inevitable opposition. It 
is difficult, at least in the records of Congress, to 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 123 

find any evidence justifying the long tradition that 
the opposition was factious or unworthy. It was 
doubtless a warfare, with its surprises, its skir- 
mishes, and its pitched battles. Mistakes of the 
adversary were promptly used. Debates were not 
had simply to promote the formal business before 
the House, but rather to reach the listening voters. 
But all this belongs to parliamentary warfare. Nor 
is it inconsistent with most exalted aims and an 
admirable performance of public business in a free 
country. Gladstone, the greatest living master in 
the work of political reform, has described himself 
as an " old parliamentary hand." Nor in the 
motions, the resolutions, the debates, led by Yan 
Buren during his three years of opposition, can 
one find any device which Palmerston or Derby or 
Gladstone in one forum, and Seward and even 
Adams liimself in his last and best years in an- 
other, have not used with little punishment from 
disinterested and enduring criticism. 

Immediately after Adams's inauguration Van 
Buren voted for Clay's confirmation as secretary 
of state, while Jackson and fourteen other senators, 
including Hayne, voted to reject him, upon the 
unfounded story of Clay's sale of the presidency to 
Adams for the oifice to which he was now nomi- 
nated. Van Buren's language and demeanor to- 
wards the new administration were uniformly be- 
coming. He charged political but not personal 
wrong-doing ; he made no insinuation of base mo» 
tives ; and his opposition throughout was the more 
forcible for its very decorum. 



124 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Tlie first great battle between the rapidly divid- 
ing forces was over the Panama mission, a creation 
of Clay's exuberant imagination. The president 
nominated to the Senate two envoys to an American 
congress called by the new South American repub- 
lics of Columbia, Mexico, and Central America, 
and in which it was proposed that Peru and Chile 
also should participate. The congress was to be 
held at Panama, which, in the extravagant rhetoric 
of some of the Republicans of the South, would, if 
the world had to elect a capital, be pointed out for 
that august destiny, placed as it was " in the centre 
of the globe." Spain had not yet acknowledged 
the independence of her revolted colonies ; and it 
was clear that the discussions of the congress must 
be largely concerned with a mutual protection of 
American nations which implied an attitude hostile 
to Spain. Adams, in his message nominating the 
envoys, declared that they were not to take part in 
deliberations of belligerent character, or to contract 
alliances or to engage in any project importing 
hostility to any other nation. But referring to the 
Monroe doctrine, Adams said that the mission 
looked to an agreement between the nations re- 
presented, that each would guard by its own means 
against the establishment of any future European 
colony within its borders ; and it looked also to an 
effort on the part of the United States to promote 
religious liberty among those intolerant republics. 
The decisive inducement, he added, to join in the 
congress was to lay the foundation of future inter* 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 125 

course with those states ^' in the broadest principles 
of reciprocity and the most cordial feelings of fra- 
ternal friendship." 

This was vague enough. But when the diploma- 
tic papers were exhibited, it was plain that the 
southern republics proposed a congress looking to 
a close defensive alliance, a sort of confederacy or 
Amphictyonie council as Benton described it ; and 
that it was highly improbable that the representa- 
tives from one country could responsibly participate 
in the congress without most serious danger of 
incurring obligations, or falling into precisely the 
embarrassments which the well settled policy of 
the United States had avoided. It was perfectly 
agreeable to Adams, resolute and aggressive Ameri- 
can that he was, that his country should look 
indulgently upon the smaller American powers, 
should stand at their head, should counsel them in 
their difficulties with European nations, and jea- 
lously take their side in those difficulties. Clay's 
eager, enthusiastic mind delighted in the picture of 
a great leadership of America by the United States, 
an American system of nations, breathing the air 
of republicanism, asserting a young and haughty 
independence of monarchical Europe, and ready 
for opposition to its schemes. In all this there 
has been fascination to many American minds, 
which even in our own day we have seen influence 
American diplomacy. But it was a step into the 
entangling alliances against which American pub- 
lic opinion had from Washington's day been set. 



126 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

When Adams asked an appropriation for the ex- 
penses of the mission, he told the House of Repre- 
sentatives that he was hardly sanguine enough to 
promise " all or even any of the transcendent bene- 
fits to the human race which warmed the concep- 
tions of its first proposer," but that it looked '' to 
the melioration of the condition of man ; " that it 
was congenial with the spirit which prompted our 
own declaration of independence, which dictated 
our first treaty with Prussia, and " which filled the 
hearts and fired the souls of the immortal founders 
of our revolution." 

Such fanciful speculation the Republicans, led 
by Van Buren, opposed with strong and heated 
protests, in tone not unlike the Liberal protests of 
1878 in England against Disraeli's Jingo policy. 
In the secret session of the Senate Van Buren pro- 
posed resolutions against the constitutionality of 
the mission, reciting that it was a departure from 
our wise and settled policy ; that, for the conference 
and discussion contemplated, our envoys already 
accredited to the new republics were competent, 
without becoming involved as members of the con- 
gress. These resolutions, so the President at once 
WTote in his opulent and invaluable diary, " are 
the fruit of the ingenuity of Martin Van Buren 
and bear the impress of his character." The mis- 
sion was, the oj^position thus insisted, unconstitu- 
tional ; a step enlarging the s})liere of the federal 
government ; a meddlesome and dangerous inter- 
ference with foreign nations ; and if it lay in the 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 127 

course of a strong and splendid policy, it was also 
part of a policy full of warlike possibilities almost 
sure to drag us into old-world quarrels. Clay's 
" American system," Hayne said in the senatorial 
debate, meant restriction and monopoly when ap- 
plied to our domestic policy, and " entangling alli- 
ances " when applied to our foreign policy. 

Van Buren's speech was very able. He did not 
touch upon the liberality of the Spanish Americans 
towards races other than the Caucasian, which 
peered out of Hayne's speech as one of the Southern 
objections. After using the wise and seemingly 
pertinent language of Washington against such 
foreign involvements, Van Buren skillfully referred 
to the very Prussian treaty which the President 
had cited in his message to the House. The elder 
Adams, the Senate was reminded, had departed 
from the rule commended by his great predecessor. 
He had told his first Congress that we were indeed 
to keep ourselves distinct and separate from the 
political system of Europe '' if we can," but that 
we needed early and continual information of poli- 
tical projects in contemplation ; that however we 
might consider ourselves, others would consider us 
a weight in the balance of power in Europe, which 
never could be forgotten or neglected ; and that it 
was natural for us, studying to be neutral, to con- 
sult with other nations engaged in the same study. 
The younger Adams had been, Van Buren pointed 
out, appointed upon the Berlin mission to carry 
out these heretical suggestions of his father. The 



128 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Republicans of that day had vigorously opposed 
the mission ; and for their opposition were de- 
nounced as a faction, and lampooned and vilified 
" by all the presses supporting and supported by 
the government, and a host of malicious parasites 
generaled by its patronage." But, covered with 
Washington's mantle, the Republicans of '98 had 
sought to strangle at its birth this political hydra, 
this first attempt since the establishment of the 
government to subject our political affairs to the 
terms and conditions of political connection with a 
foreign nation. Probabl}^ anticipating the success 
of the administration senators by a majority of 
five, Van Buren ingeniously reminded the Senate 
that those early Republicans had failed with a 
majority of four against them. But it was to be 
remembered, he continued, that after a few more 
such Federalist victories the ruin of Federalism 
had been complete. Its doctrines had speedily 
received popular condemnation. The new adminis- 
tration under the j)i'esidency of that early minister 
to Prussia had returned to the practices of the 
Federalist party, to which Van Buren with cour- 
teous indirection let it be remembered that the 
president had originally belonged. Except a guar- 
anty to Spain of its dominions beyond the Missis- 
sippi, which Jefferson had offered as part of the 
price of a cession of the territory between that 
river and the Mobile, the administrations of Jeffer- 
son, Madison, and Monroe had strictly followed 
the admonition of Washington : " Peace, com* 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 129 

merce, and lionest friendship with all nations, en- 
tano-lino- alliances with none." If we were asked 
to form a connection with European states, such 
as was proposed with the southern republics. Van 
Buren argued, no American would approve it ; and 
there was no sound reason, there was nothing but 
fanciful sentiment, to induce us to distinguish be- 
tween the states of Europe and those of South 
America. Grant that there was a Holy Alliance 
in monarchical Europe, was it not a hollow glory, 
inconsistent with a sober view of American in- 
terests, to create a holy alliance in republican 
America ? It might indeed be easy to agree upon 
speculative opinions with our younger neighbors at 
the south; but w^e should be humiliated in their 
eyes, and difficulties would at once arise, when 
means of promoting those opinions w^ere proposed, 
and we were then to say we could talk but not 
fioht. The Monroe doctrine was not to be with- 
drawn ; but we ought to be left free to act upon it 
without the burden of promises, express or implied. 
The proposed congress was a specious and dis- 
guised step towards an American confederacy, full 
of embarrassment, full of danger ; and the first 
step should be firmly resisted. Such was the out- 
line of Van Buren's argument ; and its wisdom has 
commanded a general assent from that day. 

Dickerson of New Jersey very well phrased 
sound American sentiment when he said in the 
debate that, next to a passion for war, he dreaded 
3. passion for diplomacy. The majestic declama^ 



130 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tion of Webster, his pathetic picture of a South 
America once oppressed but now emancipated, his 
eloquent cry that if it were weak to feel that he 
was an American it was a weakness from which he 
claimed no exemption, — all this met a good deal 
of exuberant response through the country. But 
it failed, as in our history most such efforts have 
failed, to convince the practical judgment of Ame- 
ricans, a judgment never long dazzled or inspired 
by the picture of an America wielding enormous 
or dominant international power. The Panama 
congress met in the absence of the American re- 
presentatives, who had been delayed. It made a 
treaty of friendship and perpetual confederation 
to which all other American j^owers might accede 
within a year. The congress was to meet annually 
in time of common war, and biennially in times of 
peace. But it never met again. The "centre of 
the world " was too far away from its very neigh- 
bors. Even South American republics could not 
be kept together by effusions of republican glory 
and international love. 

In spite of its victory in Congress, Adams's 
administration had plainly opened with a serious 
mistake. The opposition was perfectly legitimate ; 
and although in the debate it was spoken of as 
unorganized, it certainly came out of the debate a 
pretty definite party. Before the debate Adams 
had written in his diary, and truly, that it was the 
(irso subject npon which a great effort had been 
made *' to combine the discordant elements of the 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 131 

Crawford and Jackson and Calhoun men into 
a united opposition against the administration." 
Although some of the Southern opposition was 
heated by a dislike of States in which negroes 
were to be administrators, the division was not 
at all upon a North and South line. With Van 
Buren voted Findlay of Pennsylvania, Chandler 
and Holmes of Maine, Woodbury of New Hamp- 
shire, Dickerson of New Jersey, Kan:) of Illinois, 
makinof seven Northern with twelve Southern sen- 
ators. Against Van Buren were eight senators 
from slave States, Barton of Missouri, Bouligny 
and Johnston of Louisiana, Chambers of Alabama, 
Clayton and Van Dyke of Delaware, Richard M. 
Johnson of Kentucky, and Smith of Maryland. 
It was an incipient but a true j^arty division. 

Throuohout this session of 1824-25 Van Buren 
was very industrious in the Senate, and nearly, if 
not quite, its most conspicuous member, if account 
be not taken of Randolph's furious and blazing 
talents. Calhoun was only in the chair as vice- 
president ; the great duel between him and Van 
Buren not yet begun. Clay was at the head of 
the cabinet, and Webster in the lower House. 
Jackson was in Tennessee, watching with angry 
confidence, and aiding, the rising tide with the 
politicah dexterit}^ in which he was by no means a 
novice. Having only a minority with him, and 
with Benton frequently against him. Van Buren 
gradually drilled his party into opposition on inter- 
nal iniprovements, — a most legitimate and im- 



132 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

portant issue. In December, 1825, he threw down 
the gauntlet to the adniinistration, or rather took 
up its gauntlet. He proposed a resolution " that 
Congress does not possess the power to make roads 
•and canals within the respective States." At the 
same time he asked for a committee to prepare a 
constitutional amendment on the subject like his 
earlier proposal, saying with a touch of very polite 
partisanship that though the President's recent de- 
claration, that the power clearly existed in the Con- 
stitution, might diminish, it did not obviate the 
necessity of an amendment. In March, April, and 
May, 1826, he opposed appropriations of f 110,000 
to continue the Cumberland road, and of #50,000 
for surveys preparatory to roads and canals, and 
subscriptions to stock of the Louisville and Port- 
land Canal Company and of the Dismal Swamp 
Canal Company. All these were distinctly admin- 
istration measures. 

Although the principles advanced by Van Buren 
in this part of his opposition have not since ob- 
tained complete and unanimous affirmance, they 
have at least commanded so large, honorable, and 
prolonged support, that his attitude can with little 
good sense be considered one of factious difference. 
Especially wise was he on the question of govern- 
ment subscriptions to private canal companies. 
Upon one of these bills he said, in May, 1826, 
that he did not believe that the government had 
the constitutional power to make canals or to grant 
money for them ; but he added that, if he believed 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 13S 

otherwise, the grant of money should, he thought, 
be nicade directly, and not by forming a partner- 
ship between the government and a private corpo- 
ration. In 1824 he had voted for the road from 
Missouri to New Mexico ; but this stood, as the 
Pacific railway later stood, npon a different prin- 
ciple, the former as a road entirely without state 
limits and a means of international commerce, and 
the latter a road chiefly through federal territories, 
and of obvious national importance in the war be- 
tween the North and the South. 

The proposed amendment of the Constitution 
to prevent the election of president by a vote of 
States in the House of Representatives, upon which 
Van Buren had spoken in 1824, had now acquired 
new interest. Van Buren seized Adams's election 
in the House as a good subject for political war- 
fare ; and it was clearly a legitimate topic for party 
discussion and division. Van Buren would have 
been far more exalted in his notions of political 
agitation than the greatest of political leaders, had 
he not sought to use the popular feeling, that the 
American will had been subverted by the decision 
of the House, to promote his plan of constitutional 
reform. He told the Senate in May, 1826, that he 
was satisfied that there was no one point on which 
the people of the United States were more per- 
fectly united than upon the propriety of taking the 
choice of president from tlie House. But Congress 
was not ready for the change ; however much in 
theory was to be said against the clumsy system 



134 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

whicli nearly made Burr president in 1801,^ and 
which produced in 1825 a choice which Adams 
himself declared that he would vacate if the Con- 
stitution provided a mode of doing it. 

As chairman of the judiciary committee, Van 
Buren participated in a most laborious effort to 
enlarge the federal judiciary. Upon the question 
whether the judges of the Supreme Court should 
be relieved from circuit duty, he made an elabo- 
rate and very able speech upon the negative side. 
The opjx)rtunity arose for a disquisition on the 
danger of centralized government, and for a re- 
newal of the criticisms he had made in the New 
York Constitutional Convention upon the common 
and absurd picture of judges as dwellers in an 
atinosphei'e above all human infirmity, and beyond 
the reach of popular impression. Van Buren said, 
what all sensible men know, that in spite of every 
effort, incompetent men will sometimes reach the 
judicial bench. If always sitting among associates 
in hanc^ their incompetence would be shielded, he 
said, by their abler brethren. But if regularly 
compelled to perform their great duties alone and 
in the direct face of the people, and not in the 
isolation of Washington, there was another con- 
straint. Van Buren said very democratically and 
with substantial truth. '' There is a power in pub- 

- The more conspicuous difficulty in 1801 arose from the voting 
\)y each elector for two candidates without distinguishing' which 
lie preferred for president and which for viee-presidenL But the 
awkwardness and not improbable injustice of a choice by the 
House was also well illustrated in February, 1801. 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 13d 

lie oi^inlon in this country," he declared, " and I 
thank God for it, for it is the most honest and best 
of all powers, which will not tolerate an incompe- 
tent or unworthy man to hold in his weak or 
wicked hands the lives and fortunes of his fellow 
citizens/' He added an expression to which he 
would afterwards have given most narrow inter= 
pretation. The Supreme Court stood, he said, "as 
the umpire between the conflicting powers of the 
general and state governments." There was in 
the speech very plain though courteous intimation 
of that jealousy with which Van Buren's party ex- 
amined the political utterances of the court from 
Jefferson's time until, years after Van Buren's re- 
tirement, the party found it convenient to receive 
from the court, with a sanctimonious air of vene- 
ration, the most odious and demoralizing of all it? 
expressions of political opinion. In arguing for a 
close and democratic relation between the judges 
and the different parts of the country, and against 
their dignified and exalted seclusion at Washing- 
ton which was so agreeable to many patriotic Ame- 
ricans, Van Buren said, in a passage which is fairly 
characteristic of his oratorical manner : — 

" A sentiment I had almost said of idolatry for the 
Supreme Court has grown nj), which claims for its mem- 
bers an almost entire exemption from the fallibilities of 
our nature, and arraigns with unsparing bitterness the 
motives of all who have the temerity to look with in- 
quisitive eyes into this consecrated sanctuary of the law. 
So powerful has this sentiment become, such stronp- hold 



136 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

has it taken upon the press of this country, that it 
requires not a little share of firmness in a public man, 
however imperious may be his duty, to express sentiments 
that conflict with it. It is nevertheless correct, sir, that 
in this, as in almost every other case, the trutli is to be 
found in a just medium of the subject. To so much of 
the high-wrought eulogies (which the fashion of the times 
has recently produced in such great abundance) as allows 
to the distinguished men who now hold in their hands 
that portion of the administration of public affairs, tal- 
ents of the highest order, and spotless integrity, I cheer- 
fully add the very humble testimony of my unqualified 
assent. That the uncommon man who now presides 
over the court, and who I hope may long- continue to do 
so, is, in all human probability, the ablest judge now 
sitting upon any judicial bench in the world, I sincerely 
believe. But to the sentiment which claims for the 
judges so great a share of exemption from the feelings 
that govern the conduct of other men, and for the court 
the character of being the safest depository of political 
power, I do not subscribe. I have been brought up in 
an opposite faith, and all my experience has confirmed 
me in its correctness. In my legislation upon this subject 
I will act in conformity to those opinions. I believe 
the judges of the Supreme Court (gi-eat and good men as 
I cheerfully concede them to be) are subject to the 
same infirmities, influenced by the same passions, and 
operated upon by the same causes, that good and great 
men are in other situations. I believe they have as 
much of the esprit de corps as other men. Those who 
think ^ otherwise form an erroneous estimate of human 

^ Gales and Seatoirs Debates in Congress g-ive here the word 
' act " instead of " think," — but erroneously, I assume. 



UNITED STATES SENATOR . 137 

nature ; and if they act upon that estimate, will, soon or 
late, become sensible of their delusion." 

At this session, upon the election by the Senate 
of their temporary president, Van Buren received 
the comjiliment of four votes. In May, 1826, he 
participated in Benton's report on the reduction of 
executive patronage, a subject important enough, 
but there crudely treated. The report strongly 
exhibited the jealousy of executive power which 
had long been characteristic of American political 
thought. By describing the offices within the presi- 
dent's appointment, their numbers and salaries, and 
the expense of the civil list, a striking picture was 
drawn — and in that way a striking picture can al- 
ways be drawn — of the power of any great execu- 
tive. By imagining serious abuses of power, the 
picture was darkened with the dangers of patron- 
age, as it could be darkened to-clay. The country- 
was urged to look forward to the time when public 
revenue would be doubled, when the number of 
public officers would be quadrupled, when the presi- 
dent's nomination would carry any man through 
the Senate, and his recommendation any measure 
through Congress. Names, the report said, were 
nothing. The first Roman emperor was styled 
Emperor of the Republic; and the late Fi-ench 
emperor had taken a like title. The American 
president, it was hinted, might by his enormous 
patronage and by subsidies to the press, nominally 
for official advertisements, subject us to a like dan- 
ger. But the usefulness of such jjictures as thtss 



138 • MARTIN VAN BUREN 

of Benton and Van Biiren depends upon the prac- 
tical lesson taught by the artists. If there were 
disadvantao'es and dano'ers which our ancestors 
rightly feared, in placing the federal patronage 
under the sole control of the president, so there 
are disadvantages and dangers in scattering it by 
laws into various hands, or in its subjection to the 
traditions of " senatorial courtesy." 

Six bills accompanied the report. Two of them 
proposed the appointment of military cadets and 
mitlshipmen, one of each from every congressional 
district ; and this was afterwards done, giving a 
petty patronage to national legislators which public 
sentiment has but recently begun to compel them 
to use upon ascertained merit rather than in sheer 
favoriti&m. A third bill proposed that military 
and naval commissions should run " during good 
behavior " and not " daring the pleasure of the 
president." A fourth sought with extraordinary 
unwisdom to correct the old but ever new abuse of 
government advertising, by depriving the responsi- 
ble e:>.ecutive of its distribution and by placing it 
in the hands of congressmen, perhaps the very 
worst to hold it. Another required senatorial con- 
firmation for postmasters whose emoluments ex- 
ceeded an amount to be fixed. The remaining bill 
was very wise, and a natural sequence of Benton's 
not untruthful though too highly colored picture. 
The law of 1820, which fixed at four years the 
terms of many subordinate offtcers, was to be modi- 
fied so as to limit the terms only for officers who 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 139 

had not satisfactorily accounted for public moneys. 
It has been commonly said that this act was a 
device of Crawford, when secretary of the treasury, 
more easily to use federal patrona-ge for his presi- 
dential canvass. But there seems to be no suffi- 
cient reason to doubt that Benton's and Van 
Buren's committee correctly stated the intent of 
the authors of the law to have been no more than 
that the officer should be definitely compelled by 
the expiration of his term to render his accounts 
and have them completely audited ; that it was not 
intended that some other person should succeed an 
officer not found in fault ; and that the practice of 
refusing re-commissions to deserving officers was 
an unexpected perversion of the law. The com- 
mittee simply proposed to accomplish the true 
intent of the law. The same bill required the 
president to state his reasons for removals of of- 
ficers when he nominated their successors. The 
proposals in the last two bills were very creditable 
to Benton and Van Buren and their coadjutors. It 
is greatly to be lamented that they were not safely 
made laws while patronage was dispensed con- 
scientiously and with sincere public spirit by the 
younger Adams, so far as he could control it. The 
biographer has more particularly to lament that 
during the twelve years of Van Buren's executive 
influence he seemed daunted by the difficulties of 
voluntarily putting in practice the admirable rules 
which as a senator he would have imposed by law 
upon those in executive stations. It \vas only three 



i40 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

years after this re})ort, that the great chieftain, 
whom Benton and Van Buren helped to the presi- 
dency, discredited all its reasoning by proposing 
"a general extension" of the law whose operation 
they would have thus limited. The connnittee also 
proposed by constitutional amendment to forbid 
the appointment to office of any senator or repre- 
sentative until the end of the presidential term in 
which he had held his seat. This was also one of 
the reforms whose necessity seems plain enough to 
the reformer, until in office he discovers the con- 
veniences and perhaps the public uses of the prac- 
tice he has wished to abolish. 

In the short session of 1826-1827, little of any 
importance was done. Van Buren refused to vote 
with Benton to abolish the duty on salt, a vote 
doubtless influenced by the apparent interest of 
New York, w^hich itself taxed the production of 
salt to aid the State in its internal improvements, 
and which probably could not maintain the tax if 
foreign salt were admitted free. Van Buren did 
not, indeed, avow, nor did he disavow this reason. 
He was content to point out that the great canals 
of New York were of national use, though their 
expense was borne by his State alone. He voted 
at this session for lower duties on teas, coffees, 
and wines. He did not join Benton and others in 
their narrow unwillingness to establish a naval aca- 
demy. Van Buren's temper was eminently free 
from raw prejudices against disciplined education. 
The death of one of tlie envoys to the Panama 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 141 

congress enabled him again at this session to renew 
his opposition by a vote against filling the vacancy. 
Another attempt was made to pass a bankruptcy 
bill ; but again it failed through the natural and 
wholesome dislike of increasing the powers of the 
federal judiciary, and the preference that state 
courts and laws should perform all the work to 
which they were reasonably competent. The bill 
did not even pass the Senate, until by Van Buren's 
opposition it had been reduced to a bill establishing 
a summary and speedy remedy for creditors against 
fraudulent or failing traders, instead of a general 
system of bankruptcy, voluntary and involuntary, 
for all persons. Van Buren's speech against the 
insolvency features of the bill was made on January 
23, 1827, only a few days before his successor as 
senator was to be chosen. But the thoughtless 
popularity which often accompanies sweeping pro- 
positions of relief to insolvents did not move him 
from resolute and successful opposition to what he 
called (and later experience has most abundantly 
justified him) " an injurious extension of the pat- 
ronage of the federal government, and an insup- 
portable enlargement of the range of its judicial 
power." On February 24, 1827, a few days after 
his reelection, he delivered a lucid and elaborate 
speech on the long-23erplexing topic of the restric- 
tions upon American trade with the British colo- 
nies, a subject to be afterwards closely connected 
with his political fortunes. 

The agitation of the coming presidential election 



142 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

left little of its turbulence upon the records o^ the 
long session from December, 1827, to May, 1828. 
Van Buren was doubtless busy enough out of the 
senate chamber. But he v/as still a very busy 
legislator. He spoke at least twice in favor of the 
bill to abolish imprisonment under judgments rend- 
ered by federal courts for debts not fraudulently 
incurred, the bill which Richard M. Johnson had 
pressed so long and so honorably ; and at last he 
saw the bill pass in January, 1828. He spoke 
often upon the technical bill to regulate federal 
judicial process. Again he voted, and again in a 
minority and in opposition to Benton and other 
political friends, against bills to extend the Cum- 
berland road and for other internal improvements. 
Besides the usual bills to appropriate lands for 
roads and canals, and to subscribe to the stock of 
private canal companies, a step further was now 
taken in the constitutional change led by Adams 
and Clay. Public land was voted for the benefit 
of Kenyon College, in the State of Ohio. There 
was plainly intended to be no limit to federal bene- 
ficence. In this session Van Buren again rushed 
to defend the salt duty so dear to New York. 

At the same session was passed the " tariif of 
abominations," a measure so called from the op- 
pressive provisions loaded on it by its enemies, but 
in spite of which it passed. Van Buren, though 
he sat still during the debate, cast for the bill a 
protectionist vote, with Benton and several others 
whose convictions were against it, but who yielded 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 143 

to the supposed public sentiment or the peremptory 
instructions of their States, or who did not yet dare 
to make upon the tariff a presidential issue. The 
votes of the senators were sectionally thus distri- 
buted : For the tariff, — New England, 6 ; Middle 
States, 8 ; Louisiana, 1 ; and the Western States, 
11 ; in all 26. Against it, — New England, 5 ; 
Maryland, 2 ; Southern States, 13 ; and Tennessee, 
1. It was a victory of neither political party, but 
of the Middle and Western over the Southern 
States. Only three negative votes were cast by 
senators who had voted against the administration 
on the Panama question in 1826 ; while of the votes 
for the tariff, fourteen were cast by senators who 
had then opposed the administration. Of the sena- 
tors in favor of the tariff, six. Van Buren, Benton, 
Dickerson of New Jersey, Eaton of Tennessee 
(Jackson's close friend), Kane of Illinois, and 
Eowan of Kentucky, had in 1826 been in opposi- 
tion, while ten of those voting against the tariff 
had then been with them.^ The greater number 
of the opposition senators were therefore against 
the tariff, though very certainly the votes of Van 
Buren, Benton, and Eaton prevented the opposition 
from taking strong ground or suffering injury on 
the tariff in the election. Van Buren's silence in 
this debate of 1828 indicated at least a temper 
now hesitant. But he and his colleague, Sanford, 
according to the theory then popular that senators 

^ The comparison cannot of course he complete, as some "wJao 
l^ere senators in 1826 were not senators in 1828. 



144 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

were simply delegated agents of tlieir States, were 
constrained, whatever were their opinions, by a 
resolution of the legislature of New York passed 
almost unanimously in January, 1828. It stated 
H sort of ultima ratio of protection, commanding 
the senators *' to make every proper exertion to 
effect such a revision of the tariff as wdll afford a 
sufficient protection to the growers of wool, hemp, 
and flax, and the manufacturers of iron, woolens, 
and every other article, so far as the same may be 
connected with the interest of manufactures, agri- 
culture, and commerce." The senators might per- 
haps have said to this that, if they were to protect 
not only iron and woolens but also every other 
article, the^^ ought not to levy prohibitory duties 
on eiome and not on other articles : that if they 
were equally to protect manufactures, agriculture, 
and commerce, they could do no better than to 
let natural laws alone. But the silly instruction 
said what no intelligent protectionist means ; his 
system disappears with an equality of privilege; 
that equality must, he argues, at some point yield 
to practical necessities. Van Buren took the re- 
solution, however, in its intended meaning, and 
not literally. Hayne concluded his fine struggle 
against the bill by a solemn protest upon its pas- 
sage that it was a partial, unjust, and unconstitu- 
tional measure. 

At this session Van Buren, upon the considera- 
tion of a rule giving the Vice-President power to 
i^all to order for words spoken in debate, made 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 145 

perhaps the most elaborate of his purely political 
.speeches. It was a skillful and not unsuccessful 
effort to give philosophical significance to the 
coming struggle at the polls. He spoke of '^ that 
collision, which seems to be inseparable from tht 
nature of man, between the rights of the few and 
the many," of "those never-ceasing conflicts be- 
tween the advocates of the enlargement and con- 
centration of power on the one hand, and its limita- 
tion and distribution on the other." The one 
party, he said, had " grown out of a deep and 
settled distrust of the people and of the States : " 
the other, out of " a jealousy of power justified 
by all human experience." The advocates of "a 
strong government," having been defeated in much 
that they sought in the federal convention, had 
since, he said, '' been at work to obtain by con- 
struction what was not included or intended to be 
included in the grant." He declared the incorjjo- 
ration of the United States Bank to be the "" o^reat 
pioneer of constitutional encroachments." Thence 
had followed those famous usurpations, the alien 
and sedition laws of the older Adams's administra- 
tion. Then came the doctrine that the House of 
Representatives was bound to make all appropria- 
tions necessary to carr}^ out a treaty made by the 
President and Senate ; and then " the bold avowal 
that it belonged to the President alone to decide 
upon the propriety " of a foreign mission, and that 
it was for the Senate only ' to pass on the fitness 
of the individuals selected as ministers." He 



146 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

lamented the single lapse of Madison, " one of 
the most, if not the most, accomplished statesman 
that our country has produced," in signing the bill 
to incorporate the new bank. The younger Adams, 
Van Buren declared, had "gone far beyond the 
utmost latitude of construction '' therefore claimed ; 
and he added a reference, decorous enough but 
neither fair nor gracious, to Adams's own early 
entrance in the public service upon a mission un- 
authorized by Congress. It was now demonstrated, 
he said, that the result of the presidential choice 
of 1825 " was not only the restoration of the men 
of 1798, but of the principles of that day." The 
spirit of encroachment had, it was true, become 
more wary ; but it was no more honest. The 
system had then been coercion ; now it was seduc- 
tion. Then unconstitutional powers had been ex- 
ercised to force submission ; now they were as- 
sumed to purchase golden opinions from the people 
with their own means. Isolated acts of the Feder- 
alists had not produced an unyielding exclusion 
from the confidence of a majority of the people, 
for more than a quarter of a century, of large 
masses of men distinguished for talent and private 
worth. The great and glorious struggle had pro- 
ceeded from something deeper, an opposition to the 
principle of an extension of the constructive powers 
of the government. Without harsh denunciation, 
and by suggestion rather than assertion, the ad- 
ministration of John Qiiincy Adams was grouped 
with the administration of his father. The earlier 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 147 

administration had deserved and met the retribu- 
tion of a Republican victory. The later one now 
deserved and ought soon to meet a like fate. 

The issue was clearly made. The parties were 
formed. The result rested with the people. On 
February 6, 1827, Yan Buren had been reelected 
senator by a large majority in both houses of the 
New York legislature. In his brief letter of accept- 
ance he said no more on public questions than that 
it should be his " constant and zealous endeavor to 
protect the remaining rights reserved to the States 
by the federal Constitution," and " to restore those 
of which they have been divested by construction." 
This had been the main burden of his political 
oratory from the inauguration of Adams. There 
are many references in books to doubts of Yan 
Buren's position until 1827 ; but such doubts are 
not justified in the face of his prompt and perfectly 
exjjlicit utterances in the session of 1825-1826, and 
from that time steadily on. 

De Witt Clinton's death on February 11, 1828, 
removed from the politics of New York one of its 
most illustrious men, a statesman of the first rank, 
able and passionate, and of the noblest aspirations. 
The understanding reached between him and Yan 
Buren in 1826, for the support of Jackson, had not 
produced a complete coalition. In spite of the 
union on Jackson, the Bucktails nominated and 
Yan Buren loyally supported for governor against 
Cliuton in 1826, William B. Eochester, a warm 
friend and supporter of Adams and Clay, and one 



JI48 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

of the members of the very Panama mission against 
which so strenuous a fight had been made. Clinton 
was reelected by a small majority. In a meeting 
at Washington after his death, Van Buren declared 
the triumph of his talents and patriotism to be 
monuments of hioh and endurinfj fame. He was 
glad that, though in their public careers there had 
been " collisions of opinions and action at once ex- 
tensive, earnest, and enduring," they had still been 
" wholly free from that most venomous and corrod- 
ing of all poisons, personal hatred." These col- 
lisions were now " turned to nothing and less than 
nothing." Speaking of his respect for Clinton's 
name and gratitude for his signal services. Van 
Buren concluded with this striking tribute : " For 
myself, so strong, so sincere, and so engrossing is 
that feeling, that I, who whilst living, never - — 
no, never, envied him anything, now that he has 
fallen, am greatly tempted to envy him his grave 
with its honors." 

With this session of 1827-1828 ended Van 
Buren's senatorial career and his parliamentary 
leadership. From 1821 to 1828 the Senate was 
not indeed at its greatest glory. AVebster entered 
it only in December, 1827. Hayne and Benton 
with Van Buren are to us its most distinguished 
members, if Randolph's rather indescribable and 
useless personality may be excepted. But to nei- 
ther of them has the opinion of later times as- 
signed a place in the first rank of orators, although 
Hayne's tariff speech in 1824 deserves to be set 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 119 

with the greatest of American political orations. 
The records and speeches of the Senate in which 
Van Biiren sat have come to us with fine print 
and narrow margins ; they have not contributed to 
the collected works of great men. But the Senate 
was then an able body. The principles of Ameri- 
can politics were never more clearly stated. When 
the books are well dusted, and one has broken 
through the starched formality in which the speak- 
ers' phrases were set, he finds a copious fund of 
political instruction. The federal Senate was more 
truly a parliamentary body in those formative days 
than perhaps at any other period. Several at least 
of its members were in doubt as to the political 
course they should follow ; they were in doubt 
where they should find their party associations. 
To them, debates had therefore a real and present 
significance. There were some votes to be affected, 
there were converts to be gained, by speeches even 
on purely political questions ; there were some sena- 
tors whose votes were not inexorably determined 
for them by the will of their parties or their con- 
stituents. Much that was said had therefore a 
genuine parliamentary ring. The orators really 
sought to convince and persuade those who heard 
them within the easy and almost conversational 
limits of the old senate chamber. There was little 
of the mere pronouncing of essays or declamations 
intended to have their real and only effect else- 
where. In this art of true parliamentary speaking 
rather than oratory, Van Bureu was a master such 



150 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

as Lord Palmerston afterwards became. He was 
not eloquent. His speeches, so far as they are 
preserved, interest the student of political history 
and not of literature. They are sensible, clear, 
practical arguments made in rather finished sen- 
tences. One does not find quotations from them 
in books of school declamation. But they served 
far more effectively the primary end of parliamen- 
tary speaking than did the elaborate and powerful 
disquisitions of Calhoun, or the more splendid flood 
of Webster's eloquence. Van Buren's speeches 
were intended to convince, and they did convince 
some of the men in the seats about him. They 
were meant to persuade, and they did persuade. 
They were lucid exhibitions of political principles, 
generally practical, and touched sufficiently but 
not morbidly with the theoretical fears so common 
to our earlier politics. Some of those fears have 
8ince been shown to be groundless ; but out of 
many of them has come much that is best in the 
modern temper of American political institutions. 
Van Buren's speeches did not rise beyond the reach 
cf popular understanding, although they never 
warmly touched popular sympathy. They were in- 
tended to formulate and spread a political faith in 
which he plainly saw that there was the material 
of a party, — a faith founded upon the jealousy of 
federal activity, however beneficent, which sought 
to avoid state control or encourage state depend- 
ence. The prolixity which was a grave fault of 
his state papers and political letters was far less 



UNITED STATES SENATOR 151 

exhibited in his oratorical efforts. His style was 
generally easy and vigorous, with little of the tur- 
gid learning which loaded down many sensible 
speeches of the time. Now and then, however, he 
resorted to the sentences of stilted formality which 
sometimes overtake a good public speaker, as a 
good actor sometimes lapses into the stage strut. 

In Van Buren's senatorial speeches there is no- 
thing to justify the charge of " non-committalism " 
so much made against him. When he spoke at 
all he spoke explicitly ; and he plainly, though 
without acerbity, exhibited his likes and dislikes. 
Jackson was struck with this when he sat in the 
Senate with him. " I had heard a great deal about 
Mr. Van Buren," he said, " especially about his 
non-committalism. I made up my mind that 1 
would take an early opportunity to hear him and 
judge for myself. One day an important subject 
was under debate in the Senate. I noticed that 
Mr. Van Buren was taking notes while one of the 
senators was speaking. I judged from this that 
he intended to reply, and I determined to be in 
my seat when he spoke. His turn came ; and he 
rose and made a clea,r, straightforward argument, 
which, to my mind, disposed of the whole subject. 
I turned to my colleague. Major Eaton, who sat 
next to me. ' Major,' said I, ' is there anything 
non-committal about that ? ' ' No, sir,' said the 
major." Van Buren scrupulously observed the 
amenities of debate. He was uniformly court' 
eons towards adversaries ; and the calm self-control 



152 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

saved him, as some greater orators were not saved, 
from a descent to the aspersion of motiv^e so com- 
mon and so fntile in political debate. He could 
not, indeed, help now and then an allusion to the 
venality and monarchical tendency of the Federal- 
ists and their successors ; but this was an old 
formula which strong haters had years before made 
very popular in the Republican phrase-book, and 
which, as to the venality, meant nobody in parti- 
cular. 



CHAPTER V 
DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828. — GOVERNOR 

When in May, 1828, Van Buren left Washing- 
ton, the country universally recognized him as the 
chief organizer of the new party and its congres- 
sional leader. As such he turned all his skill and 
industry to win a victory for Jackson and Calhoun. 
There was never in the history of the United States 
a more legitimate presidential canvass than that of 
1828. The rival candidates distinctly stood for 
conflicting principles of federal administration. 
On the one side, under Van Buren's shrewd man- 
agement, with the theoretical cooperation of Cal- 
houn, — the natural bent of whose mind was now 
aided and not thwarted by the exigencies of his 
personal career, — was the party inclined to strict 
limitation of federal j^owers, jealous for local pow- 
ers, hostile to internal improvements by the fede- 
ral government, inclined to a lower rather than a 
higher tariff. On the other side was the party 
strongly national in temper, with splendid con= 
ceptions of a powerful and multifariously useful 
central administration, impatient of the poverties 
and meannesses of many of the States. The latter 
party was led by a president with ampler training 



154 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

in public life than any American of his time, who 
sincerely and intelligently believed the principles 
of his party ; and his party held those principles 
firmly, explicitly, and with practical unanimity. 
Jefferson, in almost his last letter, written in De- 
cember, 1825, to William B. Giles, a venerable 
leader of the Democracy, the " Charles James Fox 
of Congress," Benton's " statesman of head and 
tongue," recalled indeed Adams's superiority over 
all ordinary considerations when the safety of his 
country had been questioned ; but Jefferson de- 
clared himself in "" the deepest affliction " at the 
usurpations by which the federal branch, through 
the decisions of the federal court, the doctrines of 
the President, and the misconstructions of Con- 
gress, was stripping its " colleagues, the state au- 
thorities, of the powers reserved to them." The 
voice from Monticello, feeble with its eighty- three 
years, and secretly uttered though it was, sounded 
the summons to a new Democratic battle. 

Van Buren and his coadjutors, however, led a 
party as yet of inclination to principles rather than 
of principles. It was out of power. There was 
neither warmth nor striking exaltation in its pro- 
gramme. Its philosophical and political wisdom 
needed the aid of one of those simple cries for jus- 
tice which are so potent in political warfare, and 
a leader to interest and fire the popular temper. 
Both were at hand. The late defeat of the popu- 
lar will by the Adams-Clay coalition was the cry ,• 
the hero of the military victory most grateful to 



DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828 155 

Americans was the leader. To this cry and this 
leader Van Buren skillfully harnessed an intelli- 
gible, and at the least a reasonable, political creed. 
There were thus united nearly all the elements of 
political strength. Not indeed all, for the record 
of the leader was weak upon several articles of 
faith. Jackson had voted in the Senate for inter- 
nal improvement bills, and among them bills of 
the most obnoxious character, those authorizing 
subscriptions to the stocks of private corporations. 
He had voted against reductions of the tariff. But 
the votes, it was hoped, exhibited only his inex- 
pertness in applying general principles to actual 
legislation, or a good-natured willingness to please 
his constituents by single votes couiparatively un- 
important. In truth these mistakes were really 
inconsistencies of the politician, and no more. 
There had been a long inclination on Jackson's 
part to the Jeffersonian policy. Over thirty years 
before, he had in Congress been a strict construc- 
tionist and an anti-federalist. In 1801 he had 
required a candidate desiring his support to be 
" an admirer of state authority, agreeable to the 
true literal meaning" of the Constitution, and 
"banishing the dangerous doctrine of implication." 
If he were now to have undivided responsibility, 
this old Democratic trend of his would, it was 
hoped, be strong enough under Democratic advice. 
As a candidate, the inconsistencies of a soldier 
politician were far outweighed by his picturesque 
and powerful personality. It is commonly thought 



1.56 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

of Jackson that he was a headstrong, passionate, 
illiterate man, used and pulled about by a few in- 
triguers. Nothins: could be further froui the truth. 
He was himself a politician of a high order. His 
letters are full of shrewd, vigorous, and even man- 
aging suggestions of partisan manoeuvres. Their 
political utterances show a highly active and gen- 
erally sensible though not disciplined mind. He 
had had long and important experience of civil 
affairs, in the lower house of Congress, in the fed- 
eral Senate when he was only thirty years old, in 
the constitutional convention of his State, in its 
Supreme Court, later again in the Senate ; he had 
been for eight years before the country as a can- 
didate for its first office, and for many years in 
public business of large importance. There were 
two of the most distinguished Americans, men of 
the ripest abilities and amplest experience, and far 
removed from rashness, who from 1824 or before 
had steadily preferred Jackson for the presidency. 
These were Edward Livingston of Louisiana and 
De Witt Clinton of New York. Daniel Webster 
described his manners as " more presidential than 
those of any of the candidates." Jackson was, he 
wa-ote, "grave, mild, and reserved." Unless in 
Jackson's case there were effects without adequate 
causes, it is very certain that, with faults of most 
serious character, he still had the ability, the dig- 
nity, and the wisdom of a ruler of a high rank. 
He was, as very few men are, born to rule. 

After Crawford's defeat, Van Buren is credited 



DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828 157 

with a skillful management of the alliance of his 
forces with those of Jackson. There is not yet 
public, if it exist, any original evidence as to the 
details of this work. Van Buren's enemies were 
fond of describing it as full of cunning and trick- 
ery, the work of " the little magician ; " and later 
and fairer writers have adopted from these enemies 
this characterization. But all this seems entirely 
without proof. Nor is the story probable. The 
union of the Crawford and Jackson men was per- 
fectly natural. Crawford was a physical wreck, 
out of public life. Numerous as were the excep- 
tions, his followers and Jackson's included the 
great majority of the strict constructionists ; and 
but a minority of either of the two bodies held the 
opposite views. Neither of the two men had, at 
the last election, been defeated by the other. That 
Van Buren used at Washington his unrivaled skill 
in assuaging animosities and composing differences 
there can be no doubt. After the end of the ses- 
sion in March, 1827, together with Churchill C. 
Cambreleng, a member of Congress from New 
York and a close political friend of his, he made 
upon this mission a tour through Virginia, the Car- 
olinas, and Georgia. They visited Crawford, and 
were authorized to declare that he should support 
Jackson, but did not wish to aid Calhoun. At 
Raleigh Van Buren told the citizens that the spirit 
of encroachment had assumed a new and far more 
seductive aspect, and could only be resisted by the 
exercise of uncommon virtues. Passing through 



158 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Washington on his way north, he paid a polite 
visit to 'Adams, talking with him placidly about 
E-ufus King, Monroe, and the Petersburg horse- 
races. The President, regarding him as " the 
great electioneering manager for General Jack- 
son," promptly noted in his diary, when the inter- 
view was over, that Van Buren was now acting the 
part Burr had performed in 1799 and 1800 ; and 
he found " much resemblance of character, man- 
ners, and even person, between the two men." 

As early as 1826 the Van Buren Republicans of 
New York, and an important part of the Clinto- 
nians with the great governor at their head, had 
determined to support Jackson. Van Buren is 
said to have concealed his attitude until after his 
reelection to the Senate in 1827. But this is a 
complete error, except as to his public choice of 
a candidate. His opposition to the Adams-Clay 
administration, it has already appeared, had been 
outspoken from 1825. The Jackson candidacy was 
not indeed definitely announced in New York until 
1827. The cry for " Old Hickory " then went 
up with a sudden unanimity which seemed to the 
Adams men a bit of devilish magic, but which was 
the patient prearrangement of a skillful politician 
appreciating his responsibility, and waiting, as the 
greatest of living politicians ^ recently told Eng- 

1 This and several other references of mine to Gladstone were 
written ten years and more before his death. These years of his 
brief but extraordinary Home Rule victory, of his final defeat, — 
|or Lord Rosebery's defeat was Gladstone's defeat, — and of hig 



DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828 159 

land a statesman ought to wait, until the time was 
really ripe, until the popular inclination was suf- 
ficiently formed to justify action by men in respon* 
sible public station. 

The opposition to the reelection of John Quincy 
Adams in 1828 was sincerely considered by him, 
and has been often described by others, as singu- 
larly causeless, unworthy, and even monstrous. 
But in truth it led to one of the most necessary, 
one of the truest, political revolutions which our 
country has known. Both Adams and Clay were 
positive and able men. They were resolute that 
the rather tepid democracy of Monroe should be 
succeeded by a highly national, a federally active 
administration. Prior to the election of 1824 Clay 
had been as nearly in opposition as the era of good 
feeling permitted. Early in Monroe's administra- 
tion he had attacked the President's declaration 
that Congress had no right to construct roads and 
canals. His criticism, Mr. Schiirz tells us in his 
brilliant and impartial account of the time, " had 
a strong flavor of bitterness in it ; " it was in part 
made up of " oratorical flings," by which Clay un- 
necessarily sought to attack and humiliate Monroe. 
Adams's diary states Clay's opposition to have 
been " violent, systematic," his course to have been 
"angry, acrimonious." Late in 1819 Monroe's 

retirement, have not only added a mellow and almost sacred 
splendor to his noble career, but have still better demonstrated 
his superb political gifts. What politician indeed, dead or living. 
is to be ranked above him ? 



160 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

friends had even consulted over the wisdom of de- 
feating Clay's reelection to tlie speakership ; and 
still later Clay had, as Mr. Schurz says, fiercely 
castigated the administration for truckling to for- 
eigners. When Clay came into power, it would 
have been unreasonable for him to suppose that 
there must not arise vigorous parliamentary oppo- 
sition on the part of those who consider themselves 
the true Republican successors of Monroe, seeking 
to stop the diversion into strange ways which Clay 
and Adams had now begun. Richard Rush of 
Pennsylvania, Adams's secretary of the treasury, 
and now the Adams candidate for vice-president, 
had, in one of his annual reports, declared it to be 
the duty of government '' to augment the number 
and variety of occupations for its inhabitants ; to 
hold out to every degree of labor, and to every 
modification of skill, its appropriate object and in- 
ducement ; to organize the whole labor of a coun- 
try ; to entice into the widest ranges its mechani- 
cal and intellectual capacities, instead of suffering 
them to slumber ; to call forth, wherever hidden, 
latent ingenuity, giving to effort activity and to 
emulation ardor ; to create employment for the 
greater amount of numbers by adapting it to the 
diversified faculties, propensities, and situations of 
men, so that every particle of ability, every shade 
of genius, may come into requisition." Nor did 
this glowing picture of a useful and beneficent 
government go far beyond the utterances of Rush's 
senior associate on the presidential ticket. It is 
certain that it was highly agreeable to Clay. 



DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828 161 

Surely there could be no clearer political issue 
presented, on the one side by Van Buren's speeches 
in the Senate, and on the other by authoritative 
and solemn declarations of the three chief persons 
of the administration. Whatever the better side 
of the issue may have been, no issue was ever a 
more legitimate subject of a political campaign. 
It is true that the accusations were unfounded, 
which were directed against Adams for treachery 
to the Republican principles he professed after, on 
adhering to Jefferson, he had resigned his seat in 
the Senate. He had joined Jefferson on questions 
of foreign policy and domestic defense, and had, 
until his election to the presidency, been chiefly 
concerned with diplomacy. But though the accu- 
sations were false, it is true enough that Adams 
himself had made the issue of the campaign. Nor 
was it creditable to him that he saw in the oppo- 
sition something merely personal to himself. If 
he were wrong upon the issue, as Van Buren and 
a majority of the people thouglit, his long public 
service, his utter integrity, his exalted sense of the 
obligations of office, ought not to have saved him 
from the battle or from defeat. How true and 
deep was this political contest of 1828 one sees in 
the fact that from it, almost as much as from the 
triumph of Jefferson, flow the traditions of one of 
the great American parties, traditions which sur= 
vived the corruptions of slavery, and are still pow- 
erful in party administration.^ If John Quincy 

^ This was written nine years before the lamentable surrender 



163 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Adams had been elected, and if, as might naturally 
have been the case, there had followed, at this com. 
mencement of railway building, a firm establish^ 
ment of the doctrine that the national government 
could properly build roads within the States, it is 
more than mere speculation to say that the later 
history of the United States would, whether for 
the better or the worse, have been very different 
from what it has been. The dangers to which 
American institutions would be exposed, if the 
federal government had become a great power 
levying taxes upon the whole country to be used 
in constructing railways, or, what was worse, pur- 
chasing stock in railway corporations, and doing 
this, as it would inevitably have done, according 
to the amount of pressure here or there, — such 
dangers, it is easy to understand, seem, whether 
rightly or wrongly, appalling to a large class of 
political thinkers. To realize this sense of danger 
dissipates the aspect of doctrinaire extravagance 
in the speeches of Adams's opponents against lati- 
tudinarian construction. 

In the canvass of 1828 there was on both sides 
more wicked and despicable exhibition of slander 
than had been known since Jefferson and John 
Adams were pitted against each other. Jackson 
was a military butcher and utterly illiterate ; the 

of the organization of Van Buren's party at Chicago in 1896. It 
is safe to say that these traditions, even if fallen sadly out of 
sight, still make a deep and powerful force, which must in due 
kime assert itself. 



DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828 163 

chastity of liis wife was doubtful. Adams had 
corruptly bargained away offices ; his accounts of 
public; moneys received by him needed serious 
scrutiny ; and, that the charges might be precisely 
balanced, he had when minister at St. Petersburg 
acted as procurer to the Czar of Russia. These 
lies doubtless defeated themselves ; but in each 
election since 1828 there have been politicians 
low enough and silly enough to imitate them. To 
nothing of this kind did Van Buren descend. Nor 
does it seem that even then he used the cry of- a 
corrupt bargain between Adams and Clay, in which 
Jackson believed as Ions: as he lived. The coalition 
of 1825, defeating, as it had, a candidate chosen by 
a larger number of votei's thrin any other, was the 
most used, and probably the most successfully 
used, of any of the campaign issues. Nor was this 
clearly illegitimate, although Adams and many tor 
him have hotly condemned its immorality. tC»'^ery 
political coalition between men lately in opposition 
political and personal, by whieh both get office, is 
fairly open to criticism. In experience it has al- 
ways been full of political danger, although since 
the prejudice of the times has worn away, the de- 
fense of Adams and Clay is seen to be amply suf- 
ficient. Whatever had been their mutual dislikes 
political or personal, each of them was politically 
and in his jn^actical statesmanship far nearer to the 
other than to any other of the competitors. But 
we have yet to see a political camj^aign against a 
coalition whose members have been rewarded with 



164 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

office, iu which this form of attack is not made 
by men very intelligent and most honest. Nor is 
there any reason to hoki the followers of Jackson 
to a higher standard. In our own time we have 
seen two coalitions whose parties wisely recognized 
this danger. The chief leaders of the Republican 
revolt in 1884 neither songht nor took office from 
the former adversaries with whom for once they 
then acted. The Dissenting Liberals in England 
did not take office in the Conservative ministry 
formed in 1886 ; and the odium which, in the 
change later made in it, followed Mr. Goschen into 
its second place, illustrated very well the truth 
that, however honorable the course may be, it is 
inevitably dangerous.^ 

Nor can moral condemnation be passed upon the 
use in 1828 of the defeat in 1824, of the candidate 
having the largest popular vote. AYe see pretty 
clearly in a constitutionally governed country that 
when power is lawfully lodged with a public man, 
he must act upon his own judgment ; and that, if 
he be influenced by others, then he ought to be in- 
fluenced by the wishes and interests of those who 

1 After the Dissenting' Libeials had acted with the Conserva- 
tives, not onlv in the first Home Rule cainpaig-n in 1880, but 
during the Salisbury adniiuistration from 1880 to 1892, and in the 
campaigns of 189"2 and 1895, the coalition was ended and a new 
and single party formed, of which the Duke of Devonshire and 
Mr. Chamberlain were leaders as really as Lord Salisbury or Mr. 
Balfour. The accession of the former to the Unionist ministry 
of 1895 was in no sense a reward for bringing over some of the 
enemy. 



DEMOCRATIC VICTORY IN 1828 165 

supported him, and not of those who opposed him, 
even though far more numerous than his sup- 
porters. Repeatedly have we seen a state legisla- 
ture, which the arrangement of districts has caused 
to be elected from a party, in minority in the whole 
State, choose a federal senator who it was known 
would have been defeated upon a popular vote ; and 
this without criticism of the conduct of the legisla- 
tors, but only of the defective district division. In 
Connecticut it has happened more than once that, 
neither candidate for governor having a majority 
vote, the legislature has chosen a candidate having 
one of the smaller minorities ; and here again with- 
out criticism of the legislature's morality. But still 
the general rule of Anierican elections is, that the 
candidate shall be chosen who is preferred by more 
votes than any other. To assent to a constitutional 
defeat of such a preference, but afterwards and 
under the law to make strong appeal to right the 
wrono" which the law has wrouo'ht, seems a hisrhlv 
defensible course, and to deserve little of the criti- 
cism visited upon the Jackson canvass of 1828. If 
party divisions be justifiable, if chief public officers 
are to be chosen for their views on great questions 
of state, if the cold appeals of political reasoning- 
are ever rightly strengthened by appeals to popular 
feelings, the campaign which Van Buren and his 
associates began in 1825 or 1826 was perfectly 
justifiable. Nor in its result can any one deny, 
whether it were for better or worse, that their suc- 
cess in the battle worked a change in the principles 



166 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

of administration, and not a mere vulgar driving 
from office of one body of men that another might 
take their places. 

The death of De Witt Clinton left Van Buren 
easily the largest figure in public life, as he had for 
several years been the most powerful politician, in 
New York State. The gossip that the most impor- 
tant place in Jackson's cabinet was really allotted 
to him before the election of 1828 is probably 
true. But, whether true or not, there was, apart 
from a natural desire to administer the first office 
in his State, obvious advantage to his political 
prestige in passing successfully through a popular 
election. The most cynical of managing poli- 
ticians recognize the enormous strength of a man 
for whom the [people have actually shown that they 
like to vote. Van Buren may have counted be- 
sides u}x>n the advantage which Jackson's per- 
sonal popularity brought to those in his open alli- 
ance, although Adams was known still to have, as 
the election showed he had, considerable Demo- 
cratic strength. Van Buren took therefore the 
Bucktail nomination for governor of New York. 
The National Republicans, as the Adams men were 
called, nominated Smith Thompson, a judge of the 
federal Supreme Court. Van Buren got 136,794 
and Thompson 106,444 votes. But in spite of so 
large a plurality Van Buren did not quite have a 
majority of the popular vote. Solomon Southwick, 
the anti-Masonic candidate, received 33,345 votes. 
It was the first election after this extraordinary 



GOVERNOR 167 

movement. The abduction of Morgan and his 
probable murder to prevent his revelation of Ma. 
sonic secrets had occurred in the fall of 1826. 
Tlie criminal trials consequent upon it had caused 
intense excitement ; and a political issue was easily 
made, for many distinguished men of both parties 
were members of that secret order. How powerful 
for a time may be a popular cry, though based 
upon an utterly absurd issue, became more obvious 
still later when electoral votes for president were 
cast for William Wirt, the anti-Masonic candidate ; 
and when John Quincy Adams, after graduating 
from the widest experience In public affairs of any 
American of his generation, was, as he himself re- 
cords, willing to accept, and when William H. 
Seward was willing to tender him, a presidential 
nomination of the anti-Masonic party. As South- 
wick's preposterous vote was in 1828 drawn from 
both parties. Van Buren's prestige, although he 
had but a plurality vote, was increased by his vic- 
tory at the polls. Jackson very truly said in Feb- 
ruary, 1832, that It was now '*• the general wish and 
expectation of the Republican party throughout 
the Union " that Van Buren should take the place 
next to the President in the national administra- 
tion. Jackson was himself elected by a very great 
popular and electoral majority. In New York, 
where on this simile occasion the electors were 
chosen in districts, and where the anti-Masonic vote 
was cast against Jackson who held high rank in 
the Masonic order, Adams secured 16 votes to 



168 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Jackson's 18 ; but to the latter were added the two 
electors chosen by the thirty-four district electors. 

Van Buren's career as governor was very brief. 
He was inaugurated on January 1, 1829, and at 
once resigned his seat in the federal Senate. On 
March 12th of the same year he resigned the gov- 
ernor's seat. His inaugural message is said by 
Hammond, the political historian of New York, by 
no means too friendly to Van Buren, to have been 
"the best executive message ever communicated to 
the legislature ; " and after nearly sixty years, it 
seems, in the leather-covered tome containing it, a 
remarkably clear, wise, and courageous paper. The 
excitement over internal improvements in commu- 
nication was then at its height. He declared that, 
whatever difference there might be as to whether 
such improvements ought to be undertaken by the 
federal government or by the States, none seriously 
doubted that it was wise to apply portions of the 
means of New York to such improvements. The 
investment of the State in the Delaware and Hud- 
son canal, then just completed, had, he thought, 
been "crowned with the most cheering success." 
Splendid, too, as had been the success of the Erie 
and Cham plain canals, it was still clear that all 
had not been equally benefited. The friends of 
the sta be road and of the Chemung and Chenangfi 
canals had urged him to recommend for them a 
legislative support. But it was a time, he said, 
for "the utmost prudence and circumspection" 
upon that " delicate and vitally interesting subject." 



GOVERNOR 169 

The banking question, he told the legislature, 
would make the important business of its session. 
It turned out besides to be one of the important 
businesses of Van Buren's career. To meet the 
attacks upon him for having- once been interested 
in a bank, he dexterously recited that, " having 
for many years ceased to have an interest in those 
institutions and declined any agency in their man- 
agement," he was conscious of his imperfect in- 
formation. But he could not ignore a matter of 
such magnitude to tlieir constituents. The whole 
bank agitation at this time showed the difficulties 
and scandals caused by the absence of a free bank- 
ing system, and by the long accustomed grants of 
exclusive banking charters. Of the forty banks in 
the State, all specially incorporated, the charters of 
thirty-one would expire within one, two, three, or 
four years. Their actual capital was §15,000,000 ; 
their outstanding loans, more than $30,000,000. 
Van Buren urged, therefore, the legislature now to 
make by general law final disposition of the whole 
subject. The abolition of banks had, he said, no 
advocate, and a dependence solely upon those es- 
tablished by federal authority deserved none ; but 
he rejected the idea of a state bank. '-^ Expe- 
rience," he declared, '^ has shown that banking 
operations, to be successful, and consequently ben- 
eficial to the community, must be conducted by 
private men upon their own account." He con- 
demned the practice by which the State accepted a 
money bonus for granting a bank charter, neces- 



170 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sarily involving some monopoly. The concern of 
the State, he pointed out, should be to make its 
banks and their circulation secure ; and such secu- 
rity was impaired, not increased, by encouraging 
banks in competition with one another, and " stimu- 
lated by the golden harvest in view," to make large 
payments for their charters. He submitted for 
legislative consideration the idea of the " safety 
fund " communicated to him in an interesting and 
intelligent paper by Joshua Forman. Under this 
system all the banks of the State, whatever their 
condition, were to contribute to a fund to be ad- 
ministered under state supervision, the fund to be 
a security for all dishonored bank-notes. To this 
extent all the banks were to insure or indorse the 
circulation of each bank, thus saving the scandal 
and loss arising from the occasional failure of 
banks to redeem their notes, and making every 
bank watchful of all its associates. In compelling 
the banks to submit to some general scheme, the 
representative of the people would indeed, he said, 
enter into " conflict with the claims of the great 
moneyed interest of the country ; but what political 
exhibition so truly gratifying as the return to his 
constituents of the faithful public servant after 
having turned away every approach and j^ut far 
from him every sinister consideration ! " 

Van Buren proposed a separation of state from 
national elections; a question still discussed, and 
upon each side of which much is to be said. He 
attacked the use of money in elections, " the prac- 



GOVERNOR 171 

tice of employing persons to attend tlie polls for 
compensation, of placing large sums in the hands 
of others to entertain the electors," and other de-= 
vices by which the most valuable of all our temporal 
privileges " was brought into disrepute." If the 
expenses of elections should increase as they had 
lately done, the time would soon arrive '^ when a 
man in middling circumstances, however virtuous, 
will not be able to compete upon anything like 
ocpial "terms with a wealthy opponent." In long 
advance of a modern agitation for reform wliich, 
lately beginning with us, will, it is to be hoped, 
not cease until the abuses are removed, he proposed 
a law imposing " severe and enforcible penalties 
upon the advance of money by individuals for any 
purposes connected with the election except the 
single one of printing." 

Turning to the field of general politics, he again 
declared the political faith to whose support he 
wished to rally his party. That '' a jealousy of 
the exercise of delegated political power, a solici- 
tude to keep public agents within the precise limits 
of their authority, and an assiduous adherence to a 
rigid and scrupulous economy, were indications of 
a contracted spirit unbecoming the character of a 
statesman," he pronounced to be a political heresy, 
from which he himself had not been entirely free, 
but which ought at once to be exploded. Official 
discretion, as a general rule, could not be confided 
to any one without danger of abuse. But he re- 
proved the parsimony which disagreeably charac* 



172 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

terized the democracy of the time, and which 
inadequately paid great public servants like the 
chancellor and judges. In the tendency of the 
federal government to encroach upon the States 
lay, he thought, the danger of the federal Consti- 
tution. But of the disposition and capacity of the 
American people to resist such encroachments as 
our political history recorded, there were, he said, 
without naming either Adams, " two prominent 
and illustrious instances." As long as that good 
spirit was preserved, the republic would be safe ; 
and for that preservation every patriot ought to 

pray. 

The reputation of the covintry had in some de- 
gree suffered, he said, from " the uncharitable and 
unrelenting scrutiny to which private as well as 
public character " had been subjected in the late 
election. But this injury had been "relieved, if 
not removed, by seeing how soon the overflowing 
waters of bitterness " had spent themselves, and 
"that already the current of public feeling had 
resumed its accustomed channels." These excesses 
were the price paid for the full enjoyment of the 
right of opinion. With an assertion of " perfect 
deference to that sacred privilege, and in the hum- 
ble exercise of that portion of it " which belonged 
to him, and of a sincere desire not to offend the 
feelinsfs of those who differed from him, he ended 
his message by congratulating the legislature upon 
the election of Jackson and Calhoun. This result, 
he said in words not altogether insincere or untrue, 



GOVERNOR 173 

but full of the unfairness of partisan dispute, in- 
fused fresh vigor into the American political sys- 
tem, refuted the odious imputation that republics 
are ungrateful, dissipated the vain hope that our 
citizens could be influenced by aught save appeals 
to their understanding and love of country, and 
finally exhibited in "bold relief the omnipotence 
of public opinion, and the futility of all attempts 
to overawe it by the denunciation of power, or to 
reduce it by the allurements of patronage." 

Among the Hoyt letters, afterwards published 
by Van Buren's rancorous enemy, Mackenzie, are 
two letters of his upon his patronage as governor. 
It is not unfair to suppose that he wrote many 
other letters like them, and they give a useful 
glimpse of the distribution of offices at Albany 
sixty years ago. These letters to Hoyt were of the 
most confidential character, and showed a strong but 
not uncontrolled desire to please party friends and 
to meet party expectations. But in none of them is 
there a suggestion of anything dishonorable. He 
asked, " When will the Republican party be made 
sensible of the indispensable necessity of nomina- 
ting none but true and tried men, so that when 
they succeed they gain something ? " He was una- 
ble to oblige his " good friend Coddington ... in 
relation to the health appointments." Dr. Wester- 
velt's claims were " decidedly the strongest ; and 
much was due to the relations in which he stood to 
Governor Tompkins, especially from one who knew 
so well what the latter has done and suffered for 



174 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

this State.*' He wrote of Marcy, whom he ap- 
pointed a judge of the supreme court, that he '' was 
so situated that I must make him a judge or ruin 
him." All this is doubtless not unlike what the 
best of public officers have sometimes said and 
thought, though rarely written ; and, like most talk 
over patronage, it is not in very exalted tone. But 
if Van Buren admitted as one of Westervelt's 
claims to public office that he was of a Whig fam- 
ily and a Democrat "" from his cradle," he found 
among his other claims that he was " a gentleman 
and a man of talent," and had been " three years 
in the hospital and five years deputy health officer, 
until he was cruelly removed." Dr. Manley he 
refused to remove from the health office, because 
"his extraordinary capacity is universally admit- 
ted ; " and pointed out that the removal " could 
only be placed on political grounds, and as he was 
a zealous Jackson man at the last> election, that 
could not have been done without danger." " 1 
should not," he said, however, " have given Manley 
the office originally, if I could have found a com- 
petent Republican to take it." William L. Marcy, 
whom he made judge, was already known as one of 
the ablest men in the State, and his appointment 
was admirable, though his salvation from ruin, if 
Van Buren was speaking seriously, was not a 
public end fit to be served by high judicial ap- 
pointment. John C. Spencer, one of the best law- 
yers of New York, was appointed by Van Buren 
special counsel for the prosecution of Morgan's 



GOVERNOR 175 

murderers. Hammond wondered " how so rigid a 
party man as Mr. Van Buren was, came to appoint 
a political opponent to so important an office," but 
concluded that it was a fine specimen of his pecu- 
liar tact, because Sjjeneer, though a man of talents 
and great moral courage, might be defeated in the 
prosecution, and thus be injured with the anti- 
Masons ; while if he succeeded, his vigor and fidel- 
ity would draw upon him Masonic hostility. But 
the simpler explanation is the more probable. Van 
Buren desired to adhere in this, as he did in most 
of his appointments, to a high standard. Upon 
this particular appointment his own motives might 
be distrusted ; and he therefore went to the i-anks 
of his adversaries for one of their most distin- 
guished and invulnerable leaders. Van Buren was 
long condemned as a " spoils " politician ; but he 
was not accused of appointing either incompetent 
or dishonest men to office. In the great place of 
governor he must have already begun to see how 
difficult and dangerous was this power of patron- 
age. It must be fairly admitted that he pretty 
carefully limited, by the integrity and efficiency of 
the public service, the political use which he made 
of his appointments, — a use made in varying de- 
grees by every American holding important execu- 
tive power from the first Adams to our own time. 

On March 12, 1829, Governor Van Buren re- 
signed his office with the hearty and unanimous 
approval of his party friends, whom he gathered 
together on receiving Jackson's invitation to Wash* 



176 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

inirton. He was in their hands, he said, and should 
abide by their decision. Both houses of the legis- 
lature passed congratulatory and even affectionate 
resolutions ; and his brief and brilliant career in 
the executive chamber of the State ended happily, 
as does any career which ends that a seemingly 
greater one may begin. 



CHAPTP.R VI 

SECRETARY OF STATE. — DEFINITE FORMATION O10 
THE DEMOCRATIC CREED 

Van Buren was appointed secretary of state on 
March 5, 1829; but did not reach Washington 
until the 22d, and did not act as secretary until 
April 4. James A. Hamilton, a son of Alexander 
Hamilton, but then an influential Jackson man, 
was acting secretary in the meantime. The two 
years of Van Buren's administration of this office 
are perhaps the most picturesque years of Ameri- 
can political history. The Eaton scandal ; the 
dow^nfall of Calhoun's political power ; the magical 
success of Van Buren ; the " kitchen cabinet ; " the 
odious removals from office, and the outcries of 
the removed ; the fiery passion of Jackson ; the 
horror both real and affected of the opposition, — • 
all these have been an inexhaustible quarry to his- 
torical writers. Until very recently the larger use 
has been made of the material derived from hostile 
sources ; and it has seemed easy to paint pictures of 
this really important time in the crudest and high- 
est colors of dislike. The American democracy, 
at last let loose, driven by Jackson with a sort of 
demoniac energy and cunningly used by Van BureE 



178 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

for his own selfish and even Mephistophelian ends, 
is supposed to have broken from every sound and 
conservative principle. Perhaps for no other period 
in our history has irresponsible and unverified cam- 
paign literature of the time so largely become au- 
thority to serious writers ; and for no other period 
does truth more strongly require a judgment upon 
well established results rather than upon partisan 
rumor and gossip. During these years there was 
definitely and practically formed, under the aus- 
pices of Jackson's adndnistration, a political creed, 
a body of principles or tendencies in politics which 
have ever since strongly held the American people. 
Some of them have become established by a uni- 
versal acquiescence. During the same years there 
began an extension into federal polities of the 
" spoils system," which has been an evil second 
only to slavery, and from which we are only now 
recovering. To Van Buren more than to any man 
of his time must be awarded the credit of forming 
the creed of the Jacksonian Democracy. And in 
the shame of the abuse, which has so greatly tended 
to neutralize the soundest articles of political faith. 
Van Buren must participate with other and inferior 
men of his own time, and with the very greatest of 
the men who followed him. In this narrative it is 
impossible to ignore some of the petty and undig- 
nified details which characterized the time, — de- 
tails from part of the discredit of which Van Buren 
cannot escape. But it would lead to gross error 
to let such details obscure the vital and lasting 



SECRETARY OF STATE 179 

political work of the highest order in which Van 
Biiren was a central and controlling power. 

Besides Van Buren, Jackson's cabinet included 
Ingham of Pennsylvania in the Treasury, Eaton 
in the War Department, Branch in the Navy, Ber- 
rien of Georgia attorney-general, and Barry of 
Kentucky in the Post-Office, succeeding McLean, 
who after a short service was appointed to the 
Supreme Court. Eaton, Branch, and Berrien had 
been federal senators, the first chiefly commended 
by Jackson's strong personal liking for him. Ing- 
ham, Branch, and Berrien represented, or were 
supposed to represent, the Calhoun influence. Van 
Buren in ability and reputation easily stood head 
and shoulders above his associates. When he left 
Albany for Washington he was believed to have 
done more than any one else to secure the Ke^ 
publican triumph ; and if Webster's recollections 
twenty years later were correct, he did more to 
prevent " Mr. Adams's reelection in 1828, and to 
obtain General Jackson's election, than any other 
man — yes, than any ten other men — in the coun- 
try." He was the first politician in the party ; 
Calhoun and he were its most distino^uished states- 
men. Already the succession after Jackson be- 
longed to one of them, the only doubt being to 
which ; and in that doubt was stored up a long and 
complicated feud. The rivalry between these two 
great men was inevitable ; it was not dishonorable 
to either. Calhoun's fame was the older ; he was 
already one of the junior candidates for the presi- 



180 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

dency, popular in Pennsylvania and even in New 
.England, when Van Buren was hardly known out 
of New York. In 1829 he had been chosen vice- 
"oresident for the second time. He had shown tal- 
^nts of a very high order. But he had now suffered 
«ome years from the presidential fever which dis- 
torts the vision, and which, when popularity wanes, 
becomes heavy with enervating melancholy. He 
was an able doctrinaire, but narrow and dogmatic. 
The jealous and ravenous temper of the rich slave- 
holders of South Carolina already possessed him. 
He was a Southern man ; and all the presidents 
thus far, except the elder and younger Adams, 
had been Southerners. In 1824 he had stood in- 
different between Jackson and Adams, and in Jack- 
son's final triumph had borne no decisive part. 
Van Buren's wider, richer, and more constructive 
mind, his superior j^olitical judgment, his mellower 
personality, his practical skill in affairs, sufficiently 
explain his victory over Calhoun, without resort to 
the bitter rumors of tricks and magical manoeuvres 
spread by Calhoun's and Clays friends, and which, 
though without authentic corroboration, have to 
our own day been widely accepted. 

Before Jackson's inauguration, Calhoun sought 
to prevent Van Buren's selection for the State De- 
partment. He told the general that Tazewell of 
Virginia ought to be appointed. New York, he 
said, would have been secured by Clinton if he 
had lived ; but now New York needed no ap« 
pointment. Jackson listened coldly to the plainly 



SECRETARY OF STATE 181 

je^ilous appeal ; and James A. Hamilton, who wavS ac 
the time on intimate terms with Jackson, supposed 
it to be Calhoun's last interview wdth Jackson 
about the cabinet. Van Buren had been Jackson's 
choice a year ago; and to all the reasons which 
had then existed were now added his great services 
in the canvass, and the prestige of his popular 
election as governor. 

The episode of Mrs. Eaton, the wife of the new 
seereta.ry of war, was absurd enough in a constitu- 
tionally governed country ; but this silly '' court 
scandal," which might very well have enlivened 
the pages of a secretary of a privy council or an 
ambassador from a petty German prince, did na 
more than hasten the inevitable division. In the 
hastening, however. Van Buren doubtless reaped 
some profit in Jackson's greater friendship. Many 
respectable people in Washing^ton believed that 
unchastity on the part of this lady had induced 
her former husband, Timberlake, to cut his throat. 
Her second marriage tt> Eaton had just taken 
place in January, 1829, after Jackson, learning 
of the scandal but disbelieving it, had said to 
Eaton, ''Your marrying her will disprove these 
charges, and restore Peg's good name." Tlie gen- 
eral treated with violent contempt the persons, 
some of them clergymen, '* whose morbid appetite," 
he wrote the Rev. Dr. Ely on March 23, 1829, 
"delights in defamation and slander." Burning 
with anger at those who had dared in the recent 
canvass to malign his own wife now dead, he de- 



182 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

fended witli cliivalrous resolution the lady whom 
his own wife " to the last moment of her life be- 
lioved ... to be an innocent and much-injured 
woman." Even Mrs. Madison, he said, " was as- 
sailed by these fiends in human shape." When 
protests were made against Eaton's appointment 
to the cabinet, Jackson savagely cried, "I will 
sink or swim with him, by God ! " All this had 
happened before Van Buren reached Washington. 
There then followed the grave question, whether 
Mrs. Eaton should be adjudged guilty by society 
and sentenced to exclusion from its ceremonious 
enjoyments. The ladies generally were determined 
airainst her, even the ladies of Jackson's own house- 
hold. Jackson proposed the task, impossible even 
to an emperor, of compelling recognition of this 
distressed and persecuted consort of a minister of 
state. The unfortunate married men in the cabinet 
were in embarrassment indeed. They would not 
if they could, so they savi, — or at least they could 
not if they would, — induce their wives to visit 
or receive visits from the wife of tn.-xr colleague. 
Jackson showed them very clearly that no other 
course would satisfy him. Calhoun in his matri- 
monial state was at the same disadvantage. Even 
foreiirn ministers and their wives met the Presi- 
dent's displeasure for not properly treating the 
wife of the American secretary of war. 

Wh^n Van Buren entered this farcical scene, his 
widowed condition, and the fortune of having sons 
rather than daughters, hh him quite unembgr- 



SECRETARY OF STATE 183 

rassed. He politely called upon his associate's 
wife, as he called upon the others ; he treated her 
with entire deference of manner. It is probable, 
though by no means clear, for popular feeling 
was supposed to run high in sacred defense of the 
American home, that this was the more politic 
course. It is now, however, certain that by doing 
so he gave to Jackson, and some who were person- 
ally very close to Jackson, more gratification than 
he gave offense elsewhere ; and this has been the 
occasion of much aspersion of Van Buren's motives. 
But whether his course were politic or not, it is 
easy enough to see that any other course would 
have been inexcusable. It would have been das- 
tardly in the extreme for Van Buren, reaching 
Washington and finding a controversy raging 
whether or not the wife of one of his associates 
were virtuous, to pronounce her guilty, as he most 
unmistakably would have done had he refused her 
the attention which etiquette required him to pay 
all ladies in her position. Parton in his Life of 
Jackson quotes from an anonymous Washington 
correspondent, whose account he says was " exag- 
gerated and prejudiced but not wholly incorrect," 
the story that Van Buren induced the British and 
Russian ministers, both of whom to their immediate 
peace of mind happened to be bachelors, to treat 
Mrs. Eaton with distinction at their entertain- 
ments. But the supposition seems quite gratuitous. 
Neither of those unmarried diplomats was likely to 
do so absurdly indefensible a thing as to insult by 



i84 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

marked exclusion a cabinet minister's wife, whom 
the President for any reason, good or bad, treated 
with special distinction and respect. Van Biiren's 
common sense was a strong characteristic ; and he 
doabtless looked upon the whole affair with amused 
contempt. As the cabinet officer who had most 
to do with social ceremonies, he may well have 
sought to calm the irritation and establish for Mrs. 
Eaton, where he could, the usual forms of civility. 
Like many other blessings of etiquette, these forms 
permit one to hold unoffending neutrality upon the 
moral deserts of persons whom he meets. It hap- 
pened that Calhoun's friends had tried to prevent 
Eaton's appointment to the War Department, and 
afterwards sought to remove him from the cabinet. 
The episode added, therefore, keen edge to the 
growing hostility of Jackson and his near friends 
to Calhoun, and thus tended to strengthen his 
rival. But all this would have signified little but 
for something deeper and broader. The preference 
of Van Buren had been dictated by powerful causes 
long before Mrs. Timberlake became Mrs. Eaton. 
These causes now grew more and more powerful. 

Calhoun was serving his second term as Vice- 
President. A third term for that office was ob- 
noxious to the rule already established for the 
presidency. Calhoun therefore desired Jackson 
to be content with one term ; for if he took a 
second, Calhoun feared,, and with good reason, that 
he himself, being then out of the vice-presidency, 
and so no longer in sight on that conspicuous seat 



SECRETARY OF STATE 185 

of preparation, might fall dangerously out of mind. 
So it was soon known that Calhoun's friends were 
opposed to a second term for Jackson. At a Penn- 
sylvania meeting on March 31, 1830, the opposi- 
tion was openly made. Before this, and quite apart 
from Jackson's natural hostility to the nullification 
theory which had arisen in Calhoun's State, he had 
conceived a strong dislike for Calhoun for a per- 
sonal reason. AVith this Van Buren had nothing 
whatever to do, so far as appears from any evi- 
dence better than the uncorroborated rumors which 
ascribe to Van Buren's magic every incident which 
injured Calhoun's standing with Jackson. Years 
before, Monroe's cabinet had discussed the treat- 
ment due Jackson for his extreme measures in 
the Seminole war. Calhoun, then secretary of 
war, had favored a military trial of the victorious 
general ; but John Quincy Adams and Monroe 
had defended him, as did also Crawford, the sec- 
retary of the treasury. For a long while Jack- 
son had erroneously supposed that Calhoun was 
the only member of the cabinet in his favor ; 
and Calhoun had not undeceived him. Some time 
before Jackson's election, Hamilton had visited 
Crawford to promote the desired reconciliation 
between him and the general ; and a letter was 
written by Governor Forsyth of Georgia to Hamil- 
ton, quoting Crawford's explanation of the real 
transactions in Monroe's cabinet. Jackson was 
ignorant of all this until a dinner given by him in 
honor of Monroe in November, 1829. Ringold, a 



186 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

personal friend of Monroe's, in a complimentary 
speech at seeing Jackson and Monroe seated to- 
gether, said to W^illiam B. Lewis that Monroe had 
been " the only one of his cabinet " friendly to 
Jackson in the Seminole controversy ; and after 
dinner the remark, after being discussed between 
Lewis and Eaton the secretary of war, was repeated 
by the latter to Jackson, who said he mnst be 
mistaken. Lewis then told Jackson of Forsyth's 
letter, which greatly excited him, already disliking 
Calhoun as he did, and not unnaturally susceptible 
about his reputation in a war which had been the 
subject of violent and even savage attacks npon 
him in the recent canvass. Jackson sent at once 
to New York for the letter. But Hamilton was 
unwilling to give it without Forsyth's permission ; 
and when Forsyth, on the assembling of Congress, 
was consulted, he preferred that Crawford sliould 
be directly asked for the information. This was 
done, and Crawford wrote an account which in 
May, 1830, Jackson sent to Calhoun with a demand 
for an explanation. Calhoun admitted that he had, 
after hearing of the seizure of the Spanish forts in 
Florida and Jackson's execution of the Englishmen 
Arbuthnot and Ambrister, expressed an opinion 
against him, and proposed an investigation of his 
conduct by a court of inquiry. He further told 
Jackson, with much dignity of manner, that the 
latter was being used in a plot to effect Calhoun's 
political extinction and the exaltation of his ene- 
mies. The President received Calhoun's letter on 



SECRETARY OF STATE 187 

his way to church, and upon his return from reli- 
gious meditation wrote to the Vice-President that 
" motives are to be inferred from actions and 
judged by our God ; " that he had long repelled 
the insinuations that it was Calhoun, and not 
Crawford, who had secretly endeavored to destroy 
his reputation ; that he had never expected to say 
to Calhoun, "" Et tu^ Brute ! " and that there need 
be no further communication on the subject. 
Thus was finally established the breach between 
Calhoun and Jackson, which this personal matter 
had widened but had by no means begun. In none 
of it did Van Buren have any part. When Jack- 
son sent Lewis to him with Calhoun's letter and 
asked his opinion, he refused to read it, saying 
that an attempt would undoubtedly be made to 
hold him responsible for the rupture, and he wished 
to be able to say that he knew nothing of it. This 
course was doubtless politic, and deserves no ap- 
plause ; but it was also simply right. On getting 
this message Jackson said, " I reckon Van is right ; 
I dare say they will attempt to throw the whole 
blame on him." 

A few weeks before, on April 13, 1830, the 
dinner to celebrate Jefferson's birthday was held 
at Washington. It was attended by the President 
and Vice-President, the cabinet officers, and many 
other distinguished j^ersons. There were reports 
at the time that it was intended to use Jefferson's 
name in support of the state-rights doctrines, and 
against internal improvements and a protective 



/88 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tariff. This shows how clearly were already re- 
cognized some of the great causes underlying the 
political movements and personal differences of the 
time. The splendid parliamentary encounter be- 
tween Ha3aie and Webster had taken place but 
two or three months before. In his speech Hayne, 
who was understood, as Benton tells us, to give 
voice to the sentiments of Calhoun, had 2)lainly 
enough stated the doctrine of nullification. Jack- 
son at the dinner robustly confronted the extrem- 
ists with his famous toast, " Our federal Union : it 
must be preserved." Calhoun, already conscious 
of his leadershi]) in a sectional controversy, fol- 
lowed with the sentiment, true indeed, but said in 
words very sinister at that time : " The Union : 
next to our liberty the most dear. May we all re- 
member that it can only be preserved by respe(;ting 
the rights of the States, and distributing equally 
the benefit and burden of the Union." Tlie secre- 
tary of state next rose with a toast with little ring 
or inspiration in it, but plainly, though in concilia- 
tory phrase, declaring for the Union. He asked 
the comjiany to drink, " Mutual forbearance and 
reciprocal concessions : through their agency the 
Union was established. The patriotic spirit from 
which they emanated will forever sustain it." 

Van Buren was now definitel}'^ a candidate for 
the succession. His Northern birth and residence, 
his able leadership in Congress of the opposition 
to the Adams administration, his almost supreme 
political power in the first State of the Union, his 



SECRETARY OF STATE 189 

clear and systematic exposition of an intelligible 
and timely political creed, the support his friends 
gave to Jackson's reelection, — all these advantages 
were now reenforced by the tendency to disunion 
clear in the utterances from South Carolina, by 
Calhoun's efforts to exclude Van Buren and Eaton 
from the cabinet, by the hostility to Mrs. Eaton of 
the ladies in the households of Calhoun and of his 
friends in the cabinet, and now by Jackson's dis- 
covery that, at a critical moment of his career ten 
years before, Calhoun had sought his destruction. 
Here was a singular union of really sound reasons 
why Van Buren should be preferred by his party 
and by the country for the succession over Cal- 
houn, with the strongest reasons why Jackson, and 
those close to him, should be in most eager per- 
sonal sympathy with the preference. In Decem- 
ber, 1829, Jackson had explicitly pronounced in 
favor of Van Buren. This was in the letter to 
Judge Overton of Tennessee, which Lewis is doubt- 
less correct in saying he asked Jackson to write 
lest the latter should die before his successor was 
chosen. Jackson himself drafted the letter, which 
Lewis copied with some verbal alteration ; and the 
letter sincerely expressed his own strong opinions 
After alluding to the harmony between Van Buren 
and his associates in the War and Post-Offiee De- 
partments, he said : '* I have found him everything 
that I could desire him to be, and believe him not 
only deserving my confidence, but the confidence 
of the nation. Instead of his being selfish ^nd 



190 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

intriguing, as has been represented by some of his 
opponents, I have ever found him frank, open, 
candid, and manly. As a counselor, he is able 
and prudent, republi(*an in his principles, and one 
of the most pleasant men to do business with I 
ever knew. He, my dear friend, is well qualified 
to fill the highest office in the gift of the people, 
who in him will find a true friend and safe depos- 
itary of their rights and liberty. I wish I could 
say as much for Mr. Calhoun and some of his 
friends." He criticised Calhoun for his silence 
on the bank question, for his encouragement of 
the resolution in the South Carolina legislature 
relative to the tariff, and for his objection to the 
apportionment of the surplus revenues after the 
national debt should be paid. Jackson had not 
yet definitely learned from Forsyth's letter about 
Calhoun's attitude in Monroe's cabinet; but his 
well-aroused suspicion doubtless influenced his ex- 
pression. His strong personal liking for the secre- 
tary of state had been evident from the beginning 
of the administration. In a letter to Jesse Hoyt 
of April 13, 1829, the latter wrote that he had 
found the President affectionate, confidential, and 
kind to the last degree, and that lie believed there 
was no degree of good feeling or confidence which 
the president did not entertain for him. In July 
he wrote to Hamilton : " The general grows upon 
me every day. I can fairly say that I have become 
quite enamored with him." 

The break between Calhoun and Jackson was 



SECRETARY OF STATE 191 

kept from the public until early in 1831. In the 
preceding winter. Duff Green, the editor of the 
" Telegraph," until then the administration news- 
paper, but still entirely committed to Calhoun, 
sought to have the publication of the Calhoun- 
Jackson correspondence accompanied by a gen- 
eral outburst from Republican newspapers against 
Jackson. The storm, Benton tells us, was to seem 
so universal, and the indignation against Van 
Buren so great, that even Jackson's popularity 
would not save the prime minister. Jackson's 
friends, Barry and Kendall, learning of this, called 
to Washino'ton an unknown Kentuckian to be 
editor of a new and loyal administration paper. 
Francis P. Blair was a singularly astute man, whose 
name, and the name of whose family, afterwards 
became famous in American politics. He belonged 
to the race of advisers of great men, found by 
experience to be almost as important in a democracy 
as in a monarchy. In February, 1831, Calhoun 
openly declared war on Jackson by publishing the 
Seminole correspondence. Green having now been 
safely reelected printer to Congress, the " Tele- 
graph," according to the plan, strongly supported 
Calhoun. The " Globe," Blair's paper, attacked 
Calhoun and upheld the President. The import- 
ance in that day ascribed by politicians to the 
control of a single newspaper seems curious. In 
1823, Van Buren, while a federal senator, was 
interested in the " Albany Argus," almost steadily 
from that time until the present the ably managed 



192 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

organ of the Albany Regency ; ^ and he then con- 
fidentially wrote to Hoyt : " Without a paper thus 
edited at Albany we may hang our harps on the 
willows. With it, the party can survive a thousand 
such convulsions as those which now agitate and 
probably alarm most of those around you." This 
seems an astonishingly high estimate of the power 
of a paper which, though relatively conspicuous in 
the State, could have then had but a small circula- 
tion. It was, however, the judgment of a most 
sagacious politician. In 1822 he complained to 
Hoyt that his expenses of this description were too 
heavy. In 1833 James Gordon Bennett, then a 
young journalist of Philadelphia, WTote Hoyt a 
plain intimation that money was necessary to enable 
him to continue his journalistic warfare in Van 
Buren's behalf. Anguish, di.^appointment, despair, 
he said, brooded over him, while Van Buren chose 
to sit still and sacrifice those who had supported 
him in every weather. Van Buren replied that he 
could not directly or indirectly afford pecuniary 
aid to Bennett's press, and more particularly as he 
was then situated ; that if Bennett could not con- 
tinue friendly to him on public grounds and with 
perfect independence, he could only regret it, but 
he desired no other support. He added, however, 

1 This was written in 1887. The Albany Regency, after a life 
of sixty years, ended with the death of Daniel Manning, in Mr. 
Cleveland's first presidency, and with it ended the characteristic 
influence of its organ. The Democratic management at Albany 
has since proceeded upon very different lines and has engaged 
the ability of very different men. 



SECRETARY OF STATE 193 

not to burn his ships behind him, that he had 
supposed there would be no difficulty in obtaining 
money in New York, if their '' friends in Philadel- 
phia could not ail together make out to sustain 
one press." Thus was invited a powerful animo- 
sity, vindictively shown even when Van Buren was 
within three years of his death. 

Soon after his arrival Blair entered the famous 
Kitchen Cabinet, a singularly talented body, fond 
enough indeed of " wire-pulling," but with clear 
and steady political convictions. William B. Lewis 
had long been a close personal friend of Jackson 
and manager of his political interests, and had but 
recently earned his gratitude by rushing success- 
fully to the defense of Mrs. Jackson's reputation. 
Kendall and Hill were adroit, industrious, skillful 
men ; the former afterwards postmaster-general, 
and the latter to become a senator from New 
Hampshire. Blair entered this company full of 
zeal against nullification and the United States 
Sank. Jackson himself was so strong-willed a 
man, so shrewd in management, so skillful in read- 
ing the public temper, that the story of the com- 
plete domination of this junto over him is quite 
absurd. The really great abilities of these men 
and their entire devotion to his interests gained a 
profound and justifiable influence with him, which 
occasional petty or unworthy uses made of it did 
not destroy. No one can doubt that Jackson was 
confirmed by them in the judgment to which Van 
Buren urged him upon great political issues. The 



194 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

secretary of state refused to give the new paper of 
Blair any of the printing of his department, lest 
its origin should be attributed to him, and be- 
cause he wished to be able to say truly that he 
had nothing to do with it. Kendall, who lived 
through the civil war, strongly loyal to the Union 
and to Jackson's memory, to die a wealthy philan- 
thropist, declared in his autobiography, and doubt- 
less correctly, that the " Globe" was not established 
by Van Buren or his friends, but by friends of 
Jackson who desired his reelection for another four 
years. Nevertheless Van Buren was held respon- 
sible for the paper ; and its establishment was soon 
followed by the dissolution of the cabinet. 

This explosion, it is now clear, was of vast ad- 
vantage to the cause of the Union. It took place 
in April, 1831, and in part at least was Van Buren's 
work. On the 9th of that month he wrote to Ed- 
ward Livingston, then a senator from Louisiana 
spending the summer at his seat on the Hudson 
Kiver, asking him to start for Washington the day 
after he received the letter, and to avoid specula- 
tion " by giving out that " he was " going to Phila- 
delphia." Livingston wrote back from Washing- 
ton to his wife that Van Buren had taken the high 
and popular ground that, as a candidate for the 
presidency, he ought not to remain in the cabinet 
when its public measures would be attributed to 
his intrigue, and thus made to injure the President-, 
and that Van Buren's place was pressed upon him 
" with all the warmth of friendship and every ap 
peal to my love of country." 



SECRETARY OF STATE 195 

Van Buren, with courageous skill, put his resig- 
nation to the public distinctly on the ground of his 
own political aspiration. On April 11, 1831, he 
wrote to the President a letter for publication, 
saying that from the moment he had entered the 
cabinet it had been his '■'■ anxious wish and zealous 
endeavor to prevent a premature agitation of the 
question " of the succession, '' and at all events to 
discountenance, and if possible repress, the dispo- 
sition, at an early day manifested," to connect 
his name " with that disturbing topic." Of " the 
sincerity and constancy of his disposition" he ap- 
pealed to the President to judge. But he had not 
succeeded, and circumstances beyond his control 
had given tlie subject a turn which could not then 
*' be remedied exce])t by a selt'-disfranchisement, 
which, even if dictated Ijy " his '' individual wishes, 
could hardly be reconcilable with propriety or 
self-respect." In the situation existing at the 
time, " diversities of ulterior preference among the 
friends of the administration " were unavoidable, 
and he added : '^Even if the respective advocates of 
those thus placed in rivalship be patriotic enough 
to resist the temptation of creating obstacles to the 
advancement of him to whose elevation they are 
opposed, by embarrassing the branch of public 
service committed to his charge, they are neverthe- 
less, by their position, exposed to the suspicion of 
entertaining and encouraging such views, — a sus- 
picion which can seldom fail, in the end, to ag- 
gravate into 23resent alienation and hostility the 



190 MAKTIN VAN BUREN 

prospective differences which Mrst gave rise to it.' 
The public service, he said, required him to remove 
such "obstructions" from "the successful prosecu- 
tion of public affairs ; " and he intimated, with the 
affectation of self-depreciation which was disagree- 
ably fashionable among great men of the day, that 
the example he set would, " notwithstanding the 
humility of its origin," be found worthy of respect 
and observance. When four years later he ac- 
cepted the presidential nomiuation he repeated the 
sentiment of this letter, but more explicitly, saying 
that his " name was first associated with the ques- 
tion of General Jackson's successor more through 
the ill-will of opponents than the partiality of 
friends." This seemed very true. For every move- 
ment which had tended to commit the administra- 
tion or its chief against Calhoun or his doctrines, 
he had been held responsible as a device to advance 
himself. His adversaries had proclaimed him not 
so much a public officer as a self-seeking candidate. 
It was a rare and true stroke of political genius to 
admit his aspiration to the presidency; to deny his 
present candidacy and his self-seeking ; but, lest 
the clamor of his enemies should, if he longer 
held his office, throw doubt upon his sincerity, to 
withdraw from that station, and to 23revent the 
continued pretense that he was using official op- 
portunities, however legitimately, to increase his 
public reputation or his political pd\Mer. Thus 
would the candidacy be thrust on him by his ene- 
mies. In his letter he announced that Jackson had 



SECRETARY OF STATE 197 

consented to stand for reelection ; and that, " with- 
out a total disregard of the lights of experience," 
he could not shut his eyes to the unfavorable in- 
fluence which his continuance in the cabinet might 
have upon Jackson's own canvass in 1832. 

In accepting the resignation Jackson declared 
the reasons which the letter had presented too 
strong to be disregarded, thus practically assent- 
ing to Van Buren's candidacy to succeed him. 
Jackson looked with sorrow, he said, upon the 
state of things Van Buren had described. But it 
was " but an instance of one of the evils to which 
free governments must ever be liable," an evil 
whose remedy lay '^ in the intelligence and public 
spirit of " their "common constituents," who would 
correct it ; and in that belief he found '* abundant 
consolation." He added that, with the best op- 
portunities for observing and judging, he had seen 
in Van Buren no other desire than '*" to move qui- 
etly on in the path of " his duties, and " to pro- 
mote the harmonious conduct of public atfairs." 
"If on this point," he apostrophized the departing 
premier, " you have had to encounter detraction, 
it is but another proof of the utter insufficiency 
of innocence and worth to shield from such as- 
saults." 

Never was a presidential candidate more adroitly 
or less dishonorably presented to his party and to 
the countr3^ For the adroitness lay in the frank 
avowal of a willingness or dasire to be president 
and a resolution to be a candidate, — for which. 



198 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

so far as their conduct went, liis adversaries were 
really responsible, — and in seizing an undoubted 
opportunity to serve the public. Quite apart from 
the sound reason that the secretary of state should 
not, if possible, be exposed in dealing with public 
questions to aspersions upon his motives, as Van 
Buren was quite right in saying that he would be, 
it was also clear that the cabinet was inharmoni- 
ous ; and that its lack of harmony, whatever the 
facts or wherever the fault, seriously interfered 
with the public business. The administration and 
the country, it was obvious, were now approaching 
the question of nullification, and upon that ques- 
tion it was but patriotic to desire that its members 
should firmly share the union principles of their 
chief. Within a few weeks after the dissolution of 
the cabinet, Jackson seized the opportunity afforded 
him by an invitation from the city of Charleston to 
visit it on the 4th of July, to sound in the ears of 
nullification a ringing blast for the Union. If he 
could go, he said, he trusted to find in South Car- 
olina "all the men of talent, exalted patriotism, 
and private worth," however divided they might 
have been before, " united before the altar of their 
country on the day set apart for the solemn cele- 
bration of its independence, — independence which 
cannot exist without union, and with it is eternal." 
The disunion sentiments ascribed to distinguished 
citizens of the State were, he hoped, if indeed they 
were accurately reported, *• the effect of momentary 
excitement, not deliberate design." For all the 



SECRETARY OF STATE 199 

work then performed in defense of the Union, 
Jackson and his advisers of the time must share 
with Webster and Clay the gratitude of our own 
and all later generations. The burst of loyalty in 
Aj^ril, 1861, had no less of its genesis in the in- 
trepid front and the political success of the national 
administration from 1831 to 1833, than in the pa- 
thetic and glorious appeals and aspirations of the 
great orators. 

Jackson now called to the work Edward Liv- 
ingston, privileged to perform in it that service of 
his which deserves a splendid immortality. He be- 
came secretary of state on May 24, 1831. Eaton, 
the secretary of war, voluntarily resigned to become 
governor of Florida ; and Barry, the postmaster- 
general, who was friendly to the reorganization, 
was soon appointed minister to Spain, in which 
post Eaton later succeeded him. Ingham, Branch, 
and Berrien, the Calhoun members, were required 
to resign. The new cabinet, apart from the state 
department, was on the whole far abler than the 
old ; indeed, it was oue of the ablest of American 
cabinets. Below Livingston at the council table 
sat McLane of Delaware, recalled from the British 
mission to take the treasury, Governor Cass of 
Michigan, and Senator Woodbury of New Hamp- 
shire, secretaries of war and navy. Amos Kendall 
brought to the post-office his extraordinary astute- 
ness and diligence in administration ; and Taney- 
later the chief justice, was attorney-general. The 
executive talents of this body of n'ten, loyal as 



200 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

they were to the plans of Jackson and Van Buren, 
promised, and they afterwards brought, success in 
the struggle for the principles now adopted by the 
party, as well as for the control of the government. 
Van Buren stood as truly for a policy of state 
as ever stood any candidate before the American 
peoj^le. One finds it agreeable now to escape for 
a moment from the Washington atmosphere of per- 
sonal controversy and ambition. It is not to be 
forgotten, however, that a like atmosphere has sur- 
rounded even those political struggles in America, 
only three or four in number, which have been 
greater and deeper than that in which Jackson 
and Van Buren were the chief figures. From this 
temper of personal controversy and ambition the 
greatest political benefactors of history have not 
been free, so inevitable is the mingling with large 
affairs of the varied personal motives, conscious 
and unconscious, of those who transact them. 

When Van Buren left the first place in Jack- 
son's cabinet, the latter, too, at last stood for 
the definite policy which he had but imperfectly 
adopted when he was elected, and which, as a prac- 
tical and immediate political plan, it is reasonably 
safe to assert, was most largely the creation of the 
sagacious mind of his chief associate. Before Van 
Buren left Albany he had written to Hamilton on 
February 21, 1829, with reference to Jackson's 
inaugural : *' I hope the general will not find it 
necessary to avow any opinion upon constitutional 
questions at war with the doctrines of the Jefferson 



SECRETARY OF STATE 201 

school. Whatever his views may be, there can be 
no necessity of doing so in an inaugural address," 
This shows the doubt, which had been caused by 
some of Jackson's utterances and votes, of his in- 
telligent and systematic adherence to the political 
creed preached by Van Buien. Jackson's inau- 
gural was colorless and safe enough. U23on strict 
construction he said that he should '' keep steadily 
in view the limitations as well as the extent of th^ 
executive power ; " that he would be " animated by 
a proper respect for those sovereign members of 
our Union, taking care not to confound the powers 
they have reserved to themselves with those they 
have granted to the confederacy." The bank he 
did not mention. And upon the living and really 
great question, to which Van Buren had given so 
much study, Jackson said, himself probably having 
a grim sense of humor at the absurd emptiness of 
the sentence : '' Internal improvement and the dif- 
fusion of knowledge, so far as they can be promoted 
by the constitutional acts of the federal govern- 
ment, are of high importance." 

Very different was the situation when two years 
later Van Buren left the cabinet. In several state 
papers of great dignity and ability and yet popular 
and interesting in style, Jackson had formulated 
a political creed closely consistent with that ad- 
vocated by Van Buren in the Senate. Upon inter- 
nal improvements, Jackson, on May 27, 1830, sent 
to the House his famous Maysville Road veto. 
That road was exclusively within the State of Ohio, 



202 MARTIN VAX BUREN 

and not connected with any existing system of im- 
provements. Jackson very well said that if it 
could be considered national, no further distinction 
between the appropriate duties of the general and 
state governments need be attempted. He pointed 
out the tendency of such appropriations, little by 
little, to distort the meaning of the Constitution ; 
and found in former legislation ''an admonitory 
proof of the force of implication, and that necessity 
of guarding the Constitution with sleepless vigi- 
lance against the authority of precedents which 
have not the sanction of its most plainly defined 
powers." In his annual message of December, 
1830, he referred to the system of federal subscrip- 
tions to private corporate enterprises, saying : " The 
power which the general government would acquire 
within the several States by becoming the principal 
stockholder in corporations, controlling every canal 
and each sixty or hundred miles of every important 
road, and giving a proportionate vote to all their 
elections, is almost inconceivable, and in my view 
dangerous to the liberties of the people." With 
these utterances ended the very critical struggle to 
give the federal government a power which even 
in those clays would have been great, and which, as 
has already been said, had it continued with the 
growth of railways, would have enormously and 
radically changed our system of government. 

Before he left the Senate Van Buren had pro- 
nounced against the Bank of the United States ; but 
Jackson did not mention it in his inaugural. In 



SECRETARY OF STATE 203 

his first annual message, liowevei% Jackson warned 
Consrress that the charter of the bank would 
expire in 1836, and that deliberation upon its re 
newal ought to commence at once. " Both th( 
constitutionality and the expediency of the law 
creating this bank," he said, '^ are well questioned 
. . . ; and it must be admitted by all that it has 
failed in the great end of establishing a uniform 
and sound currency." Tliis was plain enough for 
a first utterance. A year later he told Congress 
that nothing had occurred to lessen in any degree 
the dangers which many citizens apprehended from 
that institution as then organized, though he out- 
lined an institution which should be not a corpora- 
tion, but a branch of the Treasury Department, 
and not, as he thought, obnoxious to constitutional 
objections. 

The removal of the Cherokee Indians from 
within the State of Georgia he defended by consid- 
erations which were practically unanswerable. It 
was dangerously inconsistent with our political sys- 
tem to maintain within the limits of a State Indian 
tribes, free from the obligations of state laws, 
having a tribal independence, and bound only by 
treaty relations with the United States. It was 
harsh to remove the Indians ; but it would have 
been harsher to them and to the white people of 
the State to have supported by federal arms an 
Indian sovereignty within its limits. Jackson, with 
true Democratic jealousy, refused in his political 
and executive |}olicy to defer to the merely moral 



204 MAIITIN VAN BUREN 

weight of the opinion of the Supreme Court. For 
in that tribunal political and social exigencies could 
have but limited force in answering a question 
which, as the court itself decided, called for a poli- 
tical remedy, which the President and not the court 
could apply. 

The tariff might, Jackson declared, be constitu- 
tionally used for protective purposes ; but the de- 
liberate policy of his party was now plainly inti- 
mated. In his first message he " regretted that the 
complicated restrictions which now embarrass the 
intercourse of nations could not by common consent 
be abolished." In the Maysville veto he said that, 
'* as long as the encouragement of domestic manu- 
factures " was *' directed to national ends," ... it 
should receive from him •"' a temperate but steady 
support." But this is to be read witli the expres- 
sion in the same paper that the people had a right 
to demand "the reduction of every tax to as low a 
point as the wise observance of the necessity to 
protect that portion of our manufactures and labor, 
whose prosperity is essential to our national safety 
and independence, will allow." This encourage- 
ment was, he said in his inaugural, to be given to 
those products wdiich inight be found " essential to 
our national independence." In his second mes- 
sage he declared " the obligations upon all the trus- 
tees of political power to exempt those for whom 
they act from all unnecessary burdens ; " that " the 
resources of the nation beyond those required for 
the immediate and necessary purposes of govern- 



SECRETARY OF STATE 205 

ment can nowhere be so well deposited as in the 
pockets of the people ; " that " objects of national 
importance alone ought to be protected ; " and that 
" of those the productions of our soil, our mines, 
and our workshops, essential to national defense, 
occupy the first rank." Other domestic industries, 
having- a national importance, and wliich might, 
after temporary protection, compete with foreign 
labor on equal terms, merited, he said, the same 
attenti(m in a subordinate degree. The economic 
light here was not very clear or strong, but perhaps 
as strong as it often is in a political paper. Jack- 
son's conclusion was that the tariff then existing 
taxed some of the comforts of life too highly ; pro- 
tected interests too local and minute to justify a 
general exaction ; and forced some manufactures 
for which the country was not ripe. 

All this practical and striking growth in politi- 
cal science had taken place during the two years of 
Jackson's and Van Buren's almost daily intercourse 
at Washington. It is impossible from materials 
yet made public to point out with precision the 
latter's handiwork in each of these papers. James 
A. Hamilton describes his own long nights at the 
White House on the messages of 1829 and 1830 ; 
and his were not the only nights of the kind spent 
by Jackson's friends. Jackson, like other strong 
men, and like some whose opportunities of educa- 
tion had been far ampler than his, freely used liter- 
ary assistance, although, with all his inaccuracies, 
he himself wrote in a vigorous, lucid, and interest- 



206 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ino- style. But with little doubt the political posi- 
tions taken in these papers, and which made a 
definite and lasting creed, were more immediately 
the work of the secretary of state. The consulta- 
tions with Van Buren, of which Hamilton tells, are 
only glimpses of what must continually have gone 
on. At the time of Jackson's inauguration Hamil- 
ton wrote that the latter's confidence was reposed 
in men in no way equal to him in natural parts, 
but who had been useful to him in covering '' his 
very lamentable defects of education," and whom, 
through his reluctance to expose these defects to 
others, he was compelled to keep about him. He 
added that Van Buren could never reach the same 
relation which Lewis held with the general, because 
the latter would " not yield himself so readily to 
superior as to inferior minds." This was a mistake. 
Van Buren's personal loyalty to Jackson, his re- 
markable tact and delicacy, had promptly aroused 
in Jackson that extraordinary liking for him which 
lasted until Jackson died. With this advantage, 
Van Buren's clear-cut theories of political conduct 
were easily lodged in Jackson's naturally wise 
mind, to whose prepossessions and prejudices they 
were agreeable, and received there the deference 
due to the practical sagacity in which Van Buren's 
obvious political success had proved him to be a 
master. Van Buren was doubtless greatly aided 
by the kitchen cabinet. He was careful to keep 
on good terms with those who had so familiar an 
access to Jackson. Kendall's singular and useful 



SECRETARY OF STATE 207 

ability he soon discovered. It was at the latter's 
instance that Kendall was invited to dinner at the 
White House, where Van Buren paid him special 
attention. The influence of the members of the 
kitchen cabinet with their master has been much 
exaggerated. Soon after Lewis was appointed, 
and in spite of his personal intimacy and of his 
rumored influence with the President, he was, as 
he wrote to Hamilton, in some anxiety whether he 
might not be removed ; the President had at least, 
he said, entertained a proposition to remove him, 
and was therefore, in view of Jackson's great debt 
to him, no longer entitled to his " friendship or 
future support." 

Very soon after Van Buren 's withdrawal from 
the cabinet, he was accused of primarily and chiefly 
causing the official proscription of men for political 
opinions which began in the federal service under 
Jackson. From that time to the present the accu- 
sation has been carelessly repeated from one writer 
to another, with little original examination of the 
facts. It is clear that Van Buren neither becfan 
nor caused this demoralizing and disastrous abuse 
When he reached Washington in 1829, the re- 
movals were in full and lamentable progress. In 
the very first days of the administration, McLean 
was removed from the office of postmaster-general 
to a seat in the Supreme Court, because, so Adams 
after an interview with him wrote in his diary on 
March 14, 1829, " he refused to be made the instru- 
ment of the sweeping proscription of postmasters 



208 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

which is to be one of the samples of the promised 
reform." This was a week or two before Van 
Buren reached Washington. On the same day 
Samuel Swartwout wrote to Hoyt from Washing- 
ton : ''No damned rascal who made use of his 
office or its profits for the purpose of keeping Mr. 
Adams in, and General Jackson out of power, is 
entitled to the least lenity or mercy, save that of 
hanging, . , . Whether or not I shall get anything 
in the general scramble for plunder remains to be 
23roven ; but I rather guess I shall. ... I know 
Mr. Ingham slightly, and would recommend you to 
push like a devil, if you expect anything from that 
quarter. ... If I can only keep my own legs, I 
shall do well ; but I 'm darned if I can carry any 
weight with me." This man, against Van Buren's 
earnest protest and to his great disturbance, had 
some of the devil's luck in pushing. He was ap- 
pointed collector of customs at New York, — one 
of the principal financial officers in the country. 
It is !iot altogether unsatisfactory to read of the 
scandalous defalcation of which he was afterwards 
guilty, and of the serious injury it dealt his party. 
The temper which he exposed so ingenuously, filled 
Washington at the time. Nor did it come only or 
chiefly from one quarter of the country. Kendall, 
then fresh from Kentucky, who had been appointed 
fourth auditor, wrote to his wife, with interestingly 
minoied sentiments : '' I turned out six clerks on 
Saturday. Several of them have families and are 
poor. It was the most painful thing I ever did; 



SECRETARY OF STATE 209 

but I could not well get along without It. Among 
them is a poor old man with a young wife and sev- 
eral children. I shall help to raise a contribution 
to get him back to Ohio. ... I shall have a pri- 
vate carriage to go out with me and bring mj 
whole brood of little ones. Bless their sweet 
faces." 

Van Buren confidentially wrote to Hamilton 
from Albany in March, 1829: ''If the general 
makes one removal at tliis moment he must go on. 
Would it not be better to get the streets of Wash- 
ington clear of office-seekers first in the way I pro- 
posed ? ... As to the publication in the news- 
papers I have more to say. So far as depends on 
me, my course will be to restore by a single order 
every one who has been turned out by Mr. Clay 
for political reasons, unless circumstances of a per- 
sonal character have since arisen which would make 
the reappointment in any case improper. To ascer- 
tain that will take a little time. There I would 
pause." Among the Mackenzie letters is one from 
Lorenzo Hoyt, describing an interview with Van 
Buren while governor, and then complaining that 
the latter would " not lend the utmost weight of 
his influence to displace from office such men as 
John Duer," Adams's appointee as United States 
attorney at New York. If they had been strug- 
gling for political success for the benefit of their 
opponents, lie angrily wrote, he wished to know 
it. He added, however, that, from the behavior 
of the President thus far, he thought Jackson 



210 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

would " go the whole hog." This was before Van 
Buren reached Washington. In answer to an 
insolent letter of Jesse Hoyt urging a removal, 
and telling tlie secretary of state that there was a 
" charm attending bold measures extremely fas- 
cinatino; " which had oiven Jackson all his olory. 
Van Buren wrote back : " Here I am engaged in 
the r_:;ost intricate and important affairs, which are 
new to me, and upon the successful conduct of 
which my reputation as w^ell as the interests of the 
country depend, and which keep me occupied from 
early in the morning until late at night. And can 
you think it kind or just to harass me under such 
circumstances with letters which no man of common 
sensibility can read without pain ? . . . I must be 
plain with you. . . . The terms upon which yon 
have seen fit to place our intercourse are inad- 
missible." Ingham, Jackson's secretary of the 
treasury, the next day wrote to this typical office- 
seeker that the rage for office in New York was 
such that an enemy menacing the city with desola- 
tion would not cause more excitement. He added, 
speaking of his own legitimate work : " These 
duties cannot be postponed ; and I do assure you 
that I am compelled daily to file away long lists of 
recommendations, etc., without reading them, al- 
thouofh I work 18 hours out of the 24 witli all 
diligence. The appointments can be postponed ; 
other matters cannot ; and it was one of the promi- 
nent errors of the late administration that they 
suffered many important public interests to be 



SECRETARY OF STATE 211 

neglected , while they were cruising about to secure 
or buy up partisans. This we must not do." 

Benton, friendly as he was to Jackson, con- 
demned the system of removals ; and his fairness 
may well be trusted. He said that in Jackson's 
first year (in which De Tocqueville, whom he was 
answering, said that Jackson had removed every 
removable functionary) there were removed but 
690 officers through the whole United States foi 
all causes, of whom 491 were postmasters : tha en^ 
tire number of postmasters being at the time nearly 
8000. Kendall, reviewing the first three years of 
Jackson's administration near their expiration, said 
that in the city of Washington there had been 
removed but one officer out of seven, and " most of 
them for bad conduct and character," a statement 
some of the significance of which doubtless depends 
upon what was " bad character," but which still 
fairly limits the epithet '' wholesale " customarily 
applied to these removals. In the Post- Office De- 
partment, he said, the removals had been only one 
out of sixteen, and in the whole government but 
one out of eleven. Kendall was speaking for party 
purposes ; but he was cautious and precise ; and 
his statements, made near the time, show how far 
behind the sudden " clean sweep " of 1861 was 
this earlier essay in " spoils," and how much exag- 
geration there has been on the subject. Benton 
says that in the departments at Washington a 
majority of the employees were opposed to Jack- 
son throughout his administration. Of the officers 



212 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

having a judicial function, such as land and claims 
commissioners, territorial judges, justices in the 
District of Columbia, none were removed. The 
readiness to remove was stimulated by the discovery 
of the frauds of Tobias Watkins, made just after 
his removal from the fourth auditor's place, to 
which Kendall was appointed. AVatkins had been 
Adams's warm personal friend, so the latter states 
in his diary, and " an over active partisan against 
Jackson at the last presidential election." Un- 
reasonable as was a general inference from one of 
the instances of dishonesty wliich occur under the 
best administrations, and a flagrant instance of 
which was soon to occur under his own administra- 
tion, it justified Jackson in his own eyes for many 
really shameful removals. There had doubtless 
been among office-holders under Adams a good 
deal of the " offensive partisanship " of our day, 
many expressions of horror by subordinate officers 
at the picture of Jackson as president. All this 
had angered Jackson, whose imperial temper read- 
ily classed his subordinates as servants of Andrew 
Jackson, rather than as ministers of the public 
service. Moreover, his accession, as Benton not 
unfairly pointed out, was the first great party 
chanoe since Jefferson had succeeded the elder 
Adams. Offices had greatly increased in number. 
In the profound democratic change that had been 
actively operating for a quarter of a century, the 
force of old traditions had been broken in many 
useful as in many useless things. Great numbers 



SECRETARY OF STATE 213 

of inferior offices had now become political, not 
only in New York, but in Pennsylvania, Georgia, 
and other States. Adams's administration, except 
in the change of policy upon large questions, h.ad 
been a continuation of Monroe's. He went from 
the first place in Monroe's cabinet to the presi- 
dency. His secretaries of the treasury and the 
navy and his postmaster-general and attorney-gen- 
eral had held office under Monroe, the latter three 
in the very same places. But Jackson thrust out 
of the presidency his rival, who had naturally 
enough been earnestly sustained by large numbers 
of his subordinates ; and Adams's appointees were 
doubtless in general followers of himself and of 
Clay. 

Jackson's first message contained a serious de- 
fense of the removals. Men long in office, he said, 
acquired the ''* habit of looking with indifference 
upon the public interests," and office became consi- 
dered ''' a species of property." ''^ The duties of 
all public officers," he declared, with an ignorance 
then very common among Americans, could be 
'^ made so plain and siniple that men of intelligence 
may readily qualify themselves for their perform- 
ance." Further, he pointed out that no one man 
had "any more intrinsic right" to office than an- 
other; and therefore ''no individual wrong " was 
done by removal. The officer removed, he con- 
cluded, with almost a demagogic touch, had the 
same means of earnin"; a livino; as " the millions 
who never held office." In spite of individual dis* 



214 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tress lie wished "rotation in office" to become "a 
leading principle in the Republican creed." Un- 
founded as most of this is now clearly seen to be, 
it is certain that the reasoning was convincing to a 
very large part of the American people. 

In his own department Van Buren practiced 
little of the proscription which was active else- 
where. Of seventeen foreign representatives, but 
four were removed in the first year. Doubtless 
he was fortunate in having an office without the 
amount of patronage of the Post-Office or the 
Treasury. Nothing in his career, however, showed 
a personal liking for removals. The distribution 
of offices was not distasteful to him ; but his tem- 
per was neither proscriptive nor unfriendly. At 
times even his partisan loyalty was doubted for his 
reluctance in this, which was soon deemed an ap- 
propriate and even necessfi^y party work. 

But Van Buren did not oppose the ruinous and 
demoralizing system. Powerful as he was with 
Jackson, wise and far-seeing as he was, he must 
receive for his acquiescence, or even for his silence, 
a part of the condemnation which the American 
people, as time goes on, will more and more visit 
upon one of the great political offenses committed 
against their political integrity and welfare. But 
It must in justice be remembered, not only that 
Van Buren did not begin or actively conduct the 
distribution of spoils ; not only that his acqui- 
escence was in a practice which in his own State he 
had found well established ; but that the practice 



SECRETARY OF STATE 215 

in which he thus joined was one which it is pro- 
bable he could not have fully resisted without his 
own political destruction, and perhaps the tempo- 
rary prostration of the political causes to which he 
was devoted. Though these be palliations and not 
defenses, the biographer ought not to apply to 
human nature a rule of unprecedented austerity. 
In Van Buren's politic yielding there was little, if 
any, more timidity or time-serving than in the like 
yielding by every man holding great office in the 
United States since Jackson's inauguration ; and 
the worst, the most corrupting, and the most de- 
moralizing official proscription in America took 
place thirty-two years afterwards, and under a 
president who, in wise and exalted patriotism, was 
one of the greatest statesmen, as he has been per- 
haps the best loved, of Americans, and to whom 
blame ought to be assigned all the larger by rea- 
son of the extraordinary power and prestige he 
enjoyed, and the moral fervor of the nation behind 
him, which rendered less necessary this unworthy 
aid of inferior patronage. 

So crowded and interesting were the two years 
of Van Buren's life in the cabinet with matters 
apart from the special duties of his office, that it 
is only at the last, and briefly, that an account can 
be given of his career as secretary of state. His 
-conduct of foreign affairs was firm, adroit, dig- 
nified, and highly successful. It utterly broke 
the ideal of turbulent and menacing incompetence 
uhich the Whigs set up for Jackson's presidency. 



216 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

He had to solve no difficulty of the very first 
order; for the United States were in profound 
peace with the whole world. He performed, how- 
ever, with skill and success two diplomatic services 
of real importance, services which brought de- 
served and most valuable strength to Jackson's 
administration. The American claims for French 
spoliations upon American ships during the opera- 
tion of Napoleon's Berlin and Milan decrees had 
been under discussion for many years. They were 
now resolutely pressed. In his message of Decem- 
ber, 1829, Jackson, doubtless under Van Buren's 
advice, paid some compliments to " France, our 
ancient ally ; " but then said very plainly that 
these claims, unless satisfied, would continue " a 
subject of unpleasant discussion and possible col- 
lision between the two governments." He politely 
referred to "■ the known integrity of the French 
monarch," Charles X., as an assurance that the 
claims would be paid. A few months afterwards 
this Bourbon was tumbled off the French throne ; 
and in December, 1830, Jackson with increased 
courtliness, and with a flattering allusion to La- 
fayette, conspicuous in this milder revolution as he 
had been in 1789, rejoiced in '' the high voucher 
we possess for the enlarged views and pure in- 
tegrity " of Louis Philippe. The new American 
vigor, doubtless aided by the liberal change in 
France, brought a treaty on July 4, 1831, under 
which $5,000,000 was to be paid by France, a 
result which Jackson, with pardonable boasting, 



SECRETARY OF STATE 217 

said in his message of December, 1831, was an 
encouragement " for perseverance in the demands 
of justice," and would admonish other powers, if 
any, incKned to evade those demands, that they 
woukl never be abandoned. The French treaty 
came so soon after Van Buren's retirement from 
the state department, and followed so naturally 
upon the methods of his negotiation, and his in- 
structions to William C. Rives, our minister at 
Paris, that much of its credit belonged to him. In 
March, 1830, a treaty was made with Denmark 
requiring the payment of $650,000 for Danish 
spoliations on American commerce. The effective 
pressing of these claims was justly one of the most 
popular performances of the administration. Com- 
mercial treaties were concluded with Austria in 
August, 1829; with Turkey in May, 1830; and 
with Mexico in April, 1831. 

But the chief transaction of Van Buren's foreign 
administration was the opening of trade in Ameri- 
can vessels between the United States and the 
British West Indian colonies. This commerce was 
then relatively much more important to the United 
States than in later times ; and it was chiefly by 
American shipping that American commerce was 
carried on with foreign countries. The absurd and 
odious restrictions upon intercourse so highly natu- 
ral and advantageous to the people of our seaboard 
and of the British West Indian islands had led to 
smuggling on a large scale, and were fruitful of 
international irritations. Retaliatory acts of Con- 



218 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

gress and Parliament, prohibitive proclamations of 
our presidents, and British orders in council, had 
at different times, since the close of the second 
British war in 1815, oppressed or prevented honest 
and profitable trade between neighbors who ought 
to have been friendly traders. Van Buren found 
the immediate position to be as follows. In July, 

1825, an act of Parliament had allowed foreign 
vessels to trade to the British colonies upon con- 
ditions. To secure for American vessels the benefit 
of this act, it was necessary that within one year 
American ports should be open to British vessels 
bringing the same kind of British or colonial pro- 
duce as could be imported in American vessels ; 
that British and American vessels in the trade 
should pay the same government charges ; that 
alien duties on British vessels and cargoes, that is, 
duties not imposed on the like vessels and cargoes 
owned by Americans, should be suspended ; and 
that the provision of an American law of 1823 
limiting the privileges of the colonial trade to Brit- 
ish vessels carrying colonial produce to American 
ports directly from the colonies exporting it, and 
without sto])ping at intermediate ports, should be 
repealed. eJohn Quincy Adams's administration 
had failed within the year to comply with the con- 
ditions imposed by the British law of 1825. In 

1826, therefore. Great Britain forbade this trade 
and intercourse in American vessels. Adams re- 
torted with a counter prohibition in March, 1827. 
And in this unfortunate position Van Buren found 



SECRETARY OF STATE 219 

our commercial relations with the West Indian, 
Bahama, and South American colonies of England. 
The situation was aggravated by a claim made by 
the American government in 1823 that American 
goods should pay in the colonial ports no higher 
duties than British goods, a protest against British 
protection to British industry in the British colo- 
nies coming with little grace from a country itself 
maintaining the protective system. Adams had 
sent Gallatin to England to remedy the difficulty, 
but without success. 

Van Buren adopted a different method of nego- 
tiation. A more conciliatory bearing was assumed 
towards our traditional adversary. Jackson, in 
language sounding strangely from his imperious 
mouth, was made to say in his first message that 
*' with Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace 
and war, vv^e may look forward to years of peaceful, 
honorable, and elevated competition ; that it is 
their policy to preserve the most cordial relations." 
These, he said, were his own views ; and such were 
"the prevailing sentiments of our constituents." 
In his instructions to McLane, the minister at 
London, Van Buren, departing widely from con- 
ventional diplomacy, expressly conceded that the 
American government had been wrong in its claim 
that England should admit to its colonies American 
goods on as favorable terms as British goods ; that 
it had been wrong in requiring British ships bring- 
ing colonial produce to come and go directly from 
and to the producing colonies ; and that it had 



220 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

been wrong in refusing the pri^dleges offered by 
the British law of 1825. This frank surrender of 
untenable positions showed the highest skill in ne- 
gotiation, a business for which Van Buren was 
perhaps better equipped than any American of his 
time. In these points we were '' assailable ; " we 
had " too long and too tenaciously " resisted Brit- 
ish rights. After these admissions, it would, he 
said, be improper for Great Britain to suffer " any 
feelings that find their origin in the past preten- 
sions of this government to have an adverse in- 
fluence upon the present conduct of Great Britain." 
McLane was to tell the Earl of Aberdeen that " to 
set up the act of the late administration as the 
cause of forfeiture of privileges which would other- 
wise be extended to the people of the United States 
would, under existing circumstances, be unjust in 
itself, and could not fail to excite their deepest 
sensibility." McLane was also to allude to the 
parts taken by the members of «Jackson's adminis- 
tration in the former treatment of the question 
under discussion. And here Van Buren used the 
objectionable sentence which led to his subsequent 
rejection by the Senate as minister to England, 
and which through that, such are the curious ca- 
prices of politics, led, or at least helped to lead, 
him to the presidency. He said, "• Their views 
upon that point have been submitted to the people 
of the United States ; and the counsels by which 
your conduct is now directed are the result of the 
judgment expressed by the only earthly tribunal 



SECRETARY OF STATE 221 

to which the late administration was amenable for 
its acts." 

In Van Buren's sagacious desire to emphasize 
the abandonment of claims preventing the negotia- 
tion, he here introduced to a foreign nation the 
American people as a judge that had condemned 
the assertion of such claims by Jackson's predeces- 
sor. The statement was at least an exajrsre ration. 
There was little reason to suppose that Adams's 
faikire in the negotiation over colonial trade had 
much, if at all, influenced the election of 1828. 
Nor was it dignified to officially expose our party 
contests to foreign eyes. But Van Buren was in- 
tent upon success in the negotiation. He could 
succeed where others had failed, only by a strong 
assertion of a change in American policy. His 
fault was at most one of taste in the manner of an 
assertion right enough and wise enough in itself. 
Nor were these celebrated instructions lacking in 
firmness or dignity. Great Britain was clearly 
warned that she must then decide for all time 
whether the hardships from which her West Indian 
planters suffered should continue ; and that the 
United States would not '' in expiation of supposed 
past encroachments " repeal their laws, leaving 
themselves " wholly dependent upon the indulgence 
of Great Britain," and not knowing in advance 
what course she would follow. In his speech in 
the Senate in February, 1827, Van Buren had 
clearly stated the general positions which he took 
in this famous dispatch. It is rather curious, how- 



222 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ever, that he found occasion then to say upon this 
very subject what he seemed afterwards to forget, 
that " in the collisions which may arise between 
the United States and a foreign power, it is our 
duty to present an unbroken front ; domestic dif- 
ferences, if they tend to give encouragement to 
unjust pretensions, should be extinguished or de- 
ferred ; and the cause of our government must be 
considered as the cause of our country." So easy 
it is to advise other men to be bold and firm. 

McLane's long and very able letter to the British 
foreign secretary closely followed his instructions. 
Lord Aberdeen was frankly told that the United 
States had committed " mistakes " in the past ; and 
that the " American pretensions " which had pre- 
vented a former arrangement would not be revived. 
The negotiation was entirely successful. In Octo- 
ber, 1830, the President, with the authorization of 
Congress, declared American ports open to British 
vessels and their cargoes coming from the colonies, 
and that they should be subject to the same charges 
as American vessels coming from the same colonies. 
In November a British order in council gave to 
American vessels corresponding privileges. On 
January 3, 1831, Jackson sent to the Senate the 
papers, including Van Buren's letter of instruc- 
tions. No criticism was made upon their tenor ; 
and the public, heedless of the phrases used in 
reaching the end, rejoiced in a most beneficent 
opening of commerce. 



CHAPTER VII 

MINISTER TO ENGLAND. — VICE-PRESIDENT. =— 
ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY 

In the summer of 1831 Van Buren knew very 
well the strong hold he had upon his j^arty, the 
entire and almost affectionate confidence which he 
enjoyed from Jackson, and the prestige which his 
political and official success had brought him. But 
to the country, as he was well aware, he seemed 
also to be, as he was, a politician, obviously skilled 
in the art, and an avowed candidate for the presi- 
dency. His conciliatory bearing, his abstinence 
from personal abuse, his freedom from personal 
animosities, all were widely declared to be the 
mere incidents of constant duplicity and intrigue. 
The absence of proof, and his own explicit denial 
and appeal to those who knew the facts, did not 
protect him from the belief of his adversaries — a 
belief which, without examination, has since been 
widely adopted — that to prostrate a dangerous 
rival he had promoted the quarrel between Jackson 
and Calhoun. McLane, the minister at London, 
wished to come home, and was to be tlie new secre- 
tary of the treasury. Van Buren gladly seized the 
opportunity. He would leave the field of political 



224 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

management. Three thousand miles in distance 
and a month in time away from Washington or 
New York, there could, he thought, be little pre- 
tense of personal manoeuvres on his part. He 
would thus plainly submit his candidacy to popular 
judgment upon his public career, without inter- 
ference from himself. He would escape the many 
embarrassments of every politician upon whom 
demands are continually made, — demands whose 
rejection or allowance alike brings offense. The 
English mission was prominently in the public ser- 
vice, but out of its difficulties ; and it was made 
particularly grateful to him by his success in the 
recent negotiation over colonial trade. He there- 
fore accepted the post, for which in almost every 
respect he had extraordinary equi23ment. He finally 
left the State Department in June, 1831 ; and on 
his departure from Washington eTackson conspicu- 
ously rode with him out of the cit}^ On August 
1, he was formally appointed minister to Great 
Britain ; and in September he arrived in London, 
accompanied by his son John. 

Van Buren found Washington Irving presiding 
over the London legation in McLane's absence as 
charge cVaffaires. Irving's appointment to be sec- 
retary of legation under McLane had been one of 
Van Buren's early acts, — a proof, Irving wrote, 
" of the odd way in which this mad world is gov- 
erned, when a secretary of state of a stern republic 
gives away offices of the kind at the recommenda- 
tion of a jovial little man of the seas like Jack 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 225 

Nicholson." But this was jocose. When the ap- 
pointment was suggested, it was particularly plea- 
sant to Van Buren that this graceful and gentle bit 
of patronage should be given by so grim a figure 
as Jackson. Irving had come on from Sj)ain, his 
"Columbus" just finished, and his " Alhambra 
Tales " ready for writing. His extraordinary popu- 
larity in England and his old familiarity with 
its life made him highly useful to the American 
minister, as Van Buren himself soon found. It 
was not the last time that Englishmen respected 
the republic of the west the more because the re- 
S2)ect carried with it an homage to the republic of 
letters. Irving's was an early one of the appoint- 
ments which established the agreeable tradition of 
the American diplomatic and consular service, that 
literary men should always hold some of its places 
of honor and profit. When Van Buren arrived, 
Irving was already weary of his post and had re- 
signed. He remained, however, with the new min- 
ister until he too surrendered his offi(;e. The two 
men became warm and lifelong friends. The day 
after Van Buren's arrival Irving wrote : " I have 
just seen Mr. Van Buren, and do not wonder you 
should all be so fond of him. His manners are 
most amiable and ingratiating ; and I have no 
doubt he will become a favorite at this court." 
After an intimacy of several months he wrote; 
" The more I see of Mr. Van Buren, the more I 
feel confirmed in a strong personal regard for him. 
He is one of the gentlest and most amiable men I 



226 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

have ever met with ; with an affectionate disposi- 
tion that attaches itself to those around him, and 
wins their kindness in return." 

After a few months of the charming' life which 
an American of distinction finds open to him in 
London, a life for whose duties and whose pleasures 
Van Buren was happily fitted,^ there came to him 
an extraordinary and enviable delight. He posted 
through England in an open carriage with the 
author of the " Sketch Book " and " Bracebridge 
Hall." From those daintiest sources he had years 
before got an idea of English country life, and of 
the festivities of an old-fashioned English Christ- 
mas ; and now in an exquisite companionship the 
idea became more nearly clothed with reality than 
happens witli most literary enchantments. After 
Oxford and Blenheim ; after quartering in Strat- 
ford at the little inn of the Red Horse, where they 
" found the same obliging little landlady that kept 
it at the time of the visit recorded in the ' Sketch 
Book ' ; " after Warwick Castle and Kenilworth 
and Lichfield and Newstead Abbey and Hardwick 
Castle ; after a fortnight at Christmas in Barlbor- 
ough Hall, — "a complete scene of old English 
hospitality," with many of the ancient games and 
customs then obsolete in other parts of England ; 

^ A month or two after his arrival Van Buren wrote Hamilton 
that his place was decidedly the most agreeable he had ever held, 
hnt added : " Money — money is the thing." His house was 
splendid and in a delightful situation ; hut it cost him £'000. 
His carriag-e cost him £810, and his seivants with their board 
$2,600. 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 227 

after seeing- there the " mummers and morris 
dancers and glee singers ; " after '' great feasting 
with the b()ar's-head crowned with holly, the was- 
sail bowl, the ynle-log, snapdragon, etc. ; " — after 
all these delights, inimitably told by his companion, 
Van Bnren returned to London, but not for long. 
He there enjoyed the halcyon days which the bril- 
liant society of London knew, when George IV. 
had just left the throne to his undignified but good- 
hearted and jovial brother ; when Louis Philippe 
had found a bourgeois crown in France and the con- 
descending approval of England ; when Wellington 
was the first of Englishmen ; when Prince Talley- 
rand, his early republicanism and sacrileges not at 
all forgotten, but forgiven to the ])restige of his abili- 
ties and the spL'udid fascinations of his society, 
was the chief ])ers(m in diplomatic life ; when the 
Wizard of the North, though broken, and on his 
last and vain trip to the Mediterranean for health, 
still lingered in London, one of its grand figures, 
and sadly recalled to Irving the times when they 
" went over the Eildon hills together ; " when 
Rogers was playing Maecenas and Catullus at 
breakfast-tables of poets and bankers and noble- 
men. It was amid this serene, shining, and magi- 
cal translation from the politics at home that Van 
Buren received the rude and humiliating news of 
his rejection by the Senate ; for his appointment 
had been made in recess, and he had left without a 
confirmation. 

One evening in February, 1832, before attending 



228 MAKTIN VAN BLREN 

a party at Talleyrand's, Van Bnren learned of the 
rejection, as had all London which knew there was 
an American minister. He was half ill when the 
news came ; but he seemed imperturbable. With- 
out shrinking he mixed in the splendid throng, 
gracious and easy, as if he did not know that his 
official heart would soon cease to beat. Lord 
Auckland, then president of the board of trade 
and afterwards governor-general of In(]ia, said to 
him very truly, and more prophetically than he 
fancied : '' It is an advantage to a public man to 
be the subject of an outrage." Levees and draw- 
ing-rooms and state dinnei-s were being held in 
honor of the queen's bii'thday. After a doubt as 
to the more decorous course, he kept the tenor of 
diplomatic life until he ceased to be a minister ; 
and Irving said that, " to the credit of John Bull," 
he '' was universally received with the most marked 
attention," and " treated with more respect and 
attention than before by the royal family, by the 
members of the present and the old cabinet, and 
the different persons of the diplomatic corps." On 
March 22, 1832, he had his audience of leave ; two 
days later he dined with the king at Windsor ; 
and about A])ril 1 left for Holland and a con- 
tinental tiip, this being, so he wrote a committee 
appointed at an indignation meeting in Tammany 
Hall, "' the only oppoitunity " he should probably 
ever have for the visit. 

Van Buren's dispatches from England, now pre- 
served in the archiv^es of the State Department, 



MINISTER TO ENCxLAND 229 

are not numerous. They were evidently written 
by a minister who was not very busy in official 
duties apart from the social and ceremonial life of 
a diplomat. Some of them are in his own hand- 
writing, whose straggling carelessness is quite out 
of keeping with the obvious pains which he be- 
stowed upon every subject he touched, even those of 
seemingly slight consequence. Interspersed with 
allusions to the northeastern boundary question, 
and with accounts of his protests against abuses 
practiced upon American ships in British ports, 
and of the spread of the cholera, he gave English 
political news and even gossip. He discussed the 
chances of the reform bill, rumors of what the 
ministry would do, and whether the Duke of Wel- 
lington would yield. Van Buren participated in 
no important disjDute, although before surrendering 
his post he presented one of the hateful claims 
which American administrations of both parties 
had to make in those days. This was the demand 
for slaves who escaped from the Auierican brig 
" Comet," wrecked in the Bahamas, on her way 
from the Potomac to New Orleans, and who were 
declared free by the colonial authorities. 

It is safe to believe that Secretary Livingston 
read the more interesting of these letters at the 
White House. Van Buren discreetly lightened up 
some of the diplomatic pages with 2>assages very 
agreeable to Jackson. In describing his presenta> 
tion to William IV., he told Livingston that the 
king had formed the highest estimate of Jackson's 



230 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

character, and repeated the royal remark "that 
detraction and misrepresentation were the common 
lot of all public men." Of the President's message 
of December, 1831, he wrote that few in England 
ref vised to recognize its ability or the " distin- 
guished talents of the executive by whose advice 
and labors " the affairs " of our highly favored 
country " had been " conducted to such happy re- 
sults." 

On eTuly 5, 1832, Van Buren arrived at New 
York, having several weeks before been nominated 
for the vice-presidency. He declined a public re- 
ception, he said, because, afflicted as New York 
was with the cholera, festivities would be discordant 
with the feelings of his friends ; and a few days 
later he was in Washinsfton. Con<rress was in 
session, debating the tariff bill ; and he quickly 
enough found it true, as he had already believed, 
that his rejection had been a capital blunder of 
his enemies. The rejection occurred on January 
25, 1832. Jackson's nomination had gone to the 
Senate early in December, but the opposition had 
hesitated at the responsibility for the affront. The 
debate took place in secret session, but the speeches 
were promptly made public for their effect on the 
country. Clay and Webster, the great leaders of 
the Wiiigs, and Hayne, the eloquent representa- 
tive of the Calhoun Democracy, and others, spoke 
against Van Buren. Clay and Webster based their 
rejection upon his language in the dispatch to 
McLaue, already quoted. Webster said that he 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 231 

would pardon almost anything where he saw true 
patriotism and sound American feeling ; but he 
could not forgive the sacrifice of these to party. 
Van Buren, with sensiljle and skillful foresight, 
had frankly admitted that we had been wrong in 
some of our claims ; and Gallatin, it was afterwards 
shown from his original dispatch to Clay, had ex- 
pressly said the same thing. But in a bit of bun- 
combe Webster insisted that no American minister 
must ever admit that his country had been wrong. 
" In the presence of foreign courts," he solemnly 
said, " amidst the monarchies of Europe, he is to 
stand up for his country and his whole country ; 
that no jot nor tittle of her honor is to suffer in 
his hands ; that he is not to allow others to re- 
proach either his government or his country, and 
far less is he himself to reprouch either ; that he is 
CO have no objects in his eye but American objects, 
and no heart in his bosom but an American heart." 
To say all this, Webster declared, was a duty 
whose performance he wished might be heard " by 
every independent freeman in the United States, 
by the British minister and the British king, and 
every minister and every crowned head in Europe." 
Van Buren' s language. Clay said, had been that of 
an humble vassal to a proud and haughty lord, 
prostrating and degrading the American eagle be- 
fore the British lion. These cheap appeals fell 
perfectly flat. If Van Buren had been open to 
criticism for the manner in which he pointed out a 
party change in American administration, the error 



232 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

was, at the worst, committed to preclude a Britisli 
refusal from finding justification in the offensive 
attitude previously taken by Adams. In admitting 
our mistaken " pretensions," Van Buren had been 
entirely right, barring a slight fault in the word, 
which did not, however, then seem to import the 
consciousness of wrong which it carries to later 
ears. Webster and Clay ought to have known 
that Van Buren's success where all before had 
failed would make the American people loath to 
find fault with his phrases. Nor were they at 
all ready to believe that Jackson's administration 
toadied to foreign courts. They knew better ; they 
were convinced that no American president had 
been more resolute towards other nations. 

It was also said that Van Buren had introduced 
the system of driving men from office for political 
opinions ; that he was a New York politician who 
had brought his art to Washington. Marcy, one 
of the New York senators, defended his State with 
these words, which afterwards he must have wished 
to recall : " It may be, sir, that the politicians of 
New York are not so fastidious as some gentle- 
men are as to disclosing the principles on which 
they act. They boldly preach what they practice. 
When they are contending for victory they avow 
their intention of enjo^^ing the fruits of it. If they 
are defeated, tliey expect to retire from office ; if 
they are successful, they claim, as a matter of 
right, the advantages of success. They see nothing 
wroni>- in the rule tliat to the victor belonjr the 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 233 

spoils o£ tlie enemy." To this celebrated and exe- 
crable defense Van Buren owes much of the later 
and unjust belief that he was an inveterate " spoils- 
man." It has already been shown how little foun- 
dation there is for the charge that he introduced 
the system of official proscription. Benton truly 
said that Van Buren's temper and judgment were 
both against it, and that he gave ample proofs of 
his forbearance. Webster did not touch upon this 
objection. Clay made it very subordinate to the 
secretary's abasement before the British lion. 

The attack of the Calhoun men was based upon 
Van Buren's supposed intrigue against their chief, 
and his breaking up of the cabinet. But people 
saw then, better indeed than some historians have 
since seen, that between Calhoun and Van Buren 
there had been great and radical political diver- 
gence far deeper than personal jealousy. To sur 
render the highest cabinet office, to leave Washing- 
ton and all the places of political management, in 
order to take a lower office in remote exile from 
the sources of political power, — these were not be- 
lieved to be acts of mere trickery, but rather to be 
parts of a courageous and self-respecting appeal for 
justice. It seemed a piece of political animosity 
wantonly to punish a rival with such exquisite 
humiliation in the eves of foreigners. 

There was a clear majority against confirming 
Van Buren. But to make his destruction the more 
signal, and as Calhoun had no opportunity to 
speak, enough of the majorit}^ refrained from vot 



234 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

mg to enable the Democratic vice-president to give 
the casting vote for the rejection of this Demo- 
cratic nominee. Calhoun's motive was obvious 
enough from his boast in Benton's hearing : '' It 
will kill him, sir, kill him dead. He will never 
kick, sir, never kick." This bit of unaffected na= 
ture was refreshing after all the solemnly insincere 
declarations of grief which had fallen from the 
opposition senators in performing their duty. 

The folly of the rejection was quickly apparent. 
Benton very well said to Moore, a senator from 
Alabama who had voted against Van Buren, " You 
have broken a minister and elected a vice-president. 
The people will see nothing in it but a combination 
of rivals against a coni23etitor." The popular ver= 
diet was promptly given. Van Buren had already 
become a candidate to succeed Jackson five years 
later; he was only a possible candidate for vice- 
president at the next election. When the rejection 
was widely known, it was known almost equally 
well and soon that Van Buren would be the Jack- 
sonian candidate for vice-president. Meetings were 
held ; addresses were voted ; the issue was eagerly 
seized. The Democratic members of the New 
York legislature early in February, 1832, under an 
inspiration from Washington, addressed to Jackson 
an expression of their indignation in the stately 
words which our fathers loved, even wlien they 
went dangerously near to bathos. They had freely, 
they said, surrendered to his call their most distin< 
guished fellow-citizen ; when Van Buren had with« 



MINISTER TO ENGLAND 235 

drawn from tlie cabinet they had beheld in Jack- 
son's continual confidence in him irrefragable proof 
that no combination could close Jackson's eyes to 
the cause of his country ; New York would indeed 
avenge tlie indignity thus offered to her favorite 
son ; but they would be unmindful of their duty 
if they failed to console Jackson with their sym- 
pathy in this degradation of the country he loved 
so well. On February 28, Jackson replied with 
no less dignity and with skill and force. He was, 
he said, — and the whole country believed him, — 
incapable of tarnishing the pride or dignity of that 
country whose glory it had been his object to ele- 
vate ; Van Buren's instructions to McLane had 
been his instructions ; American pretensions which 
Adams's administration had admitted to be unten- 
able had been resigned ; if just American claims 
were resisted upon the ground of the unjust posi- 
tion taken by his predecessor, then and then only 
was McLane to point out that there had been a 
change in the policy and counsels of the govern- 
ment with the change of its officers. Jackson said 
that he owed it to the late secretary of state and to 
the American people to declare that Van Buren had 
no jjarticipation whatever in the occurrences be 
tween Calhoun and himself ; and that there was 
no ground for imputing to Van Buren advice to 
make the removals from office. He had called Van 
Buren to the state department not more for his 
acknowledged talents and public services than to 
meet the general wish and expectation of the Re- 



g36 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

publican party ; his signal ability and success in 
office had fully justified the selection : his own 
respect for Van Buren's great public and private 
worth, and his full confidence in his inte^ritv were 
undiminished. This blast from the unquestioned 
head of the party prodigiously helped the general 
movement. The only question was how best to 
avenge the wrong. 

It was susfcrested that Van Buren sliould return 
directly and take a seat in the Senate, which Dud- 
ley would willingly surrender to him, nnd should 
there meet his slanderers face to face. Some 
thought that he should have a triumphal entry 
into New York, without an idea of going into the 
" senatorial cock-pit " unless he were not to re- 
ceive the vice-presidency. Others thought that he 
should be made governor of New Yoik, an idea 
shadowed forth in the Albany address to Jackson. 
As a candidate for that place, he would escape the 
jealousies of Pennsylvania and perhaps Virginia, 
and augment the local strength of the party in 
New York. , To this it was replied from Washing- 
ton that they might better cut his throat at once ; 
that if the Republican party could not, under ex- 
isting circumstances, make Van Buren vice-presi- 
dent, they need never look to the presidency for 
him. This was declared to be the unanimous 
opinion of the cabinet. New York Republicans 
were begged not to '^ lose so glorious an opportu- 
nity of strengthening and consolidating the party." 
The people at Albany, it was said, were " mad, . . . 



CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 237 

as if New York can make amends for an insult 
offered by fourteen States of the Union." 

In this temper the Republican or Democratic 
convention met at Baltimore on May 21, 1832. It 
was the first national gathering of the party ; and 
was summoned simply to nominate a vice-president= 
Jackson's renomination was already made by the 
sovereign people, which might be justly affronted 
by the assembling of a body in apparent doubt 
whether to obey the popular decree. National 
conventions were inevitable upon the failure of the 
congressional caucus in 1824. Tlie system of sepa- 
rate nominations in different States at irregular 
times was too inconvenient, too inconsistent with 
unity of action and a central survey of the whole 
situation. In 1824 its inconvenience had been 
obvious enough. In 1828 circumstances had desig- 
nated both the candidates with perfect certainty ; 
and isolated nominations in different parts of the 
country were then in no danger of clashing. It 
has been recently said that the convention of 1832 
was assembled to force Van Buren's nomination for 
vice-president. But it is evident from the letter 
which Barton prints, written by Lewis to Kendall 
on May 25, 1831, when the latter was visiting Isaac 
Hill, the Jacksonian leader in New Hampshire, 
that the convention was even then proposed by 
"the most judicious" friends of the administra- 
tion. It was suggested as a plan ''of putting a 
stop to partial nominations " and of '' harmoniz- 
ing" the party. Barbour, Dickinson, and McLan^ 



238 MARTIN VAX BUREN 

were the candidates discussed in this letter ; Vao 
Biiren was not named. He was about sailino- for 
England ; and although an open candidate for the 
presidential succession after Jackson, he was not 
then a candidate for the second office. The ascrip- 
tion of the convention to management in his behalf 
seems purely gratuitous. Upon this early invita- 
tion, the New Hampshire Democrats called the 
convention. One of them opened its session by a 
brief speech alluding to the favor with which the 
idea of the conv^ention had met, " although opposed 
by the enemies of the Democratic j^arty," as the 
Republican party headed by Jackson was now per- 
haps first definitely called. He said that " the 
coming together of representatives of the people 
from the extremity of the Union would have a 
tendency to soothe, if not to unite, the jarring in- 
terests ; " and that the people, after seeing its good 
effects in conciliating the different and distant sec- 
tions of the country, would continue the mode of 
nomination. This natural and sensible motive to 
strengthen and solidify the party is ample explana- 
tion of the convention, without resorting to the 
rather worn charge brought against so many poli- 
tical movements of the time, that thev arose from 
Jackson's dictatorial desire to throttle the senti- 
ment of his party. In making nominations the 
convention resolved that each State should have as 
many votes as it would be entitled to in the electo- 
ral college. To assure what was deemed a rea- 
sonable approach to unanimity, two thirds of the 



CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 239 

whole number of votes was required for a choice, 
— a precedent sad enough to Van Buren twelve 
years later. On the first ballot Van Buren had 
208 of the 283 votes. Virginia, South Carolina, 
Indiana, and Kentucky, with a few votes from 
North Carolina, Alabama, and Illinois, were for 
Philip P. Barbour of Virginia or Richard Mo 
Johnson of Kentucky. The motion, nowadays im- 
mediately made, that the nomination be unanimous 
v/as not offered ; but after an adjournment a reso- 
lution was adopted that inasmuch as Van Buren 
had received the votes of two thirds of the dele- 
gates, the convention unanimously concur " in re- 
commending him to the people of the United States 
for their support." 

No platform was adopted. A committee was 
appointed after the nomination to draft an address ; 
but after a night's work they reported that, al- 
though '' agreeing fully in the principles and senti- 
ments which they believe ought to be embodied in 
an address of this desca-iption, if such an address 
were to be made," it still seemed better to them 
that the convention recommend the several delega- 
tions '' to make such explanations by address, re- 
port, or otherwise to their respective constituents 
of the objects, proceedings, and result of the meet- 
ing as they may deem expedient." This was a 
franker intimation than those to which we are now 
used, that the battle was to be fought in each State 
upon the issue best suited to its local sentiments ; 
and was entitled to quite as much respect as meaa- 



840 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ingless jilatitiules adopted lest one State or anotliei 
be offended at something explicit. Jackson's firm 
and successful foreign policy, his opposition to in- 
ternal improvements by the federal government, 
his strong stand against nullification, his opposition 
to the United States Bank, — for from the battle 
over the re-charter, precipitated by Clay early in 
1832 to embarrass Jackson, the latter had not 
shrunk, — and above all Jackson himself, these 
were the real planks of the platfv)rm. But the 
paiiy wanted the votes of Pennsylvania Jackson- 
ians who believed in the Bank and of western 
Jacksonians who wished federal aid for roads and 
canals. The great tariff debate was then going on 
in Congree^ ; and the subject seemed full of danger. 
The election was like the usual English canvass 
on a parliamentary dissolution. The country was 
merely asked without specifications : Do you on 
the whole like Jackson's administration ? 

There is no real ground for the supposition 
that intrigue or coercion was necessary to pro- 
cure Van Buren's nomination. It was dictated by 
the simplest and plainest political considerations. 
Calhoun was in opposition. After Jackson, Van 
Bui-en was clearly the most distinguished and the 
ablest member of the administration party ; he had 
rendered it services of the highest order; he was 
very popular in the most important State of New 
York ; he was abroad, suffering from what Irving 
at the time truly called " a very short-sighted and 
mean-spirited act of hostility." The affront had 



CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 241 

aroused a general feeling which would enable Van 
Buren to strengthen the ticket. In his department 
had been performed the most shining achievements 
of the administration. To the politicians about 
Jackson, and very shrewd men they were. Van 
Buren's succession to Jackson promised a firmer, 
abler continuance of the administration than that 
of any other public man. Could he indeed have 
stayed minister to Enghmd, he would have con- 
tinued a figure of the first distinction, free from 
local and temporary animosities and embarrass- 
ments. From that post he might perhaps, as did 
a later Democratic statesman, most easily have 
ascended to the presidency ; the vice-presidency 
would have been unnecessary to the fiual promo- 
tion. But after the tremendous affront dealt him 
by Calhoun and Clay, his tame return to private 
life would seem fatal. He must reenter public 
life. And no reentry, it was plain, could be so 
striking as a popular election to the second station 
in the land, nominal though it was, and in taking 
it to displace the very enemy who had been finally 
responsible for the wrong done him. 

A month after his return Van Buren formally 
accepted the nomination. The committee of the 
convention had assured him that if the great Re- 
publican party continued faithful to its principles, 
there was every reason to congratulate him and 
their illustrious president that there was in reserve 
for his wounded feelings a just and certain repara- 
tion. Van Buren said in reply that previous to 



242 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

his departure from the United States his name 
had been frequently mentioned for the vice-presi- 
dency ; but that he had uniformly declared himself 
altogether unwilling to be considered a candidate, 
and that to his friends, when opportunity offered, 
he had given the grounds of his unwillingness. 
All this was strictly true. He had become a can- 
didate for the presidential succession ; and honor= 
able absence as minister to England secured a 
better preparation than presence as vice-piesident 
amidst the difficulties and suspicions of Washing- 
ton. But his position, he added, Lad since that 
period been essentially changed by the circum- 
stance to which the committee had referred, and 
to which, with some excess of modesty he said, 
rather than to any superior fitness on his part, he 
was bound to ascribe his nomination. He grate- 
fully received this spontaneous expression of confi- 
dence and friendship from the delegated democracy 
of the Union. He declared it to be fortunate for 
the country that its public affairs were under the 
direction of one who had an early and inflexible 
devotion to republican principles and a moral cour- 
age which distinguished him from all otliers. In 
the conviction, he said, that on a faithful adherence 
to these principles depended the stability and value 
of our confederated system, he humbly hoped lay 
his motive, rather than any other, for accepting 
the nomination. This rather clumsy affectation of 
humility would have been more disagreeable had 
it not been closely associated with firm and manl}' 



CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 243 

expressions, and because it was so common a for- 
mality in the political vernacular of the day. In 
treating the people as the sovereign, there were 
adopted the sort of rhetorical extravagances used 
by attendants upon monarchs. 

On October 4, 1832, Van Buren, upon an inter- 
rogation by a committee of a meeting at Shocco 
Springs, North Carolina, wrote a letter upon the 
tariff. He said that he believed "the establish- 
ment of commercial regulations with a view to the 
encouragement of domestic products to be within 
the constitutional power of Congress." But as to 
what should be the character of the tariff he in- 
dulged in the generalities of a man who has opin- 
ions which he does not think it wise or timely to 
exhibit. He did not wish to see the power of 
Congress exercised with "oppressive inequality" 
or " for the advantage of one section of the Union 
at the expense of another." The approaching ex- 
tino-uishment of the national debt presented an op- 
portunity for a " more equitable adjustment of the 
tariff," an opportunity already embraced in the 
tariff of 1832, whose spirit as " a conciliatory mea- 
sure" he trusted would be cherished by all who 
preferred pubhc to private interests. These vague 
expressions would have fitted either a revenue 
reformer or an extreme protectionist. Both disbe- 
lieved, or said they did, in oppression and inequal- 
ity. With a bit of irony, perhaps unconscious, he 
added that he had been thus "explicit" in the 
statement of his sentiments that there might not 



244 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

be room for misapprehension of his views. He 
did, however, in the letter approve " a reduction of 
the revenue to the wants of the government," and 
'^ a preference in encouragement given to such 
manufactures as are essential to the national de- 
fense, and its extension to others in proportion as 
they are adajited to our country and of which the 
raw material is produced by ourselves." The last 
phrase probably hinted at Van Buren's position. 
He believed in strictly limiting protective duties, 
although he had voted for the tariff of 1828. But 
he told Benton that he cast this vote in obedience 
to the " demos krateo " principle, that is, because 
his State required it. He again spoke strongly 
against the policy of internal improvements, and 
the " scrambles and combinations in Congress " 
unavoidably resulting from them. He was " un- 
reservedly opposed " to a renewal of the charter of 
the Bank, and equally opposed to nullification, 
which involved, he believed, the '' certain destruc- 
tion of the confederacy." 

A few days later he wrote to a committee of 
" democratic-republican young men " in New York 
of the peculiar hatred and contumely visited upon 
him. Invectives against other men, he said, were 
at times suspended ; but he had never enjoyed a 
moment's respite sin(?e his first entrance into pub- 
lic life. Many distinguished public men had, he 
added, been seriously injured by favors from the 
press ; but there was scarcely an instance in which 
the objects of its obloquy had not been raised Id 



CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDEXT 24^5 

public estimation in exact proportion to the inteii- 
sity and duration of the abuse. 

Both the letter from the Baltimore convention 
and Van Buren's reply alluded to "diversity of 
sentiments and interests," disagreements '' as to 
measures and men " among the Republicans. The 
secession of Calhoun and the bitter hostility of his 
friends seriously weakened the party. But against 
this was to be set the Anti-Masonic moveuient 
which drew far more largely from Jackson's oppo- 
nents than from his supporters, for Jackson was a 
Mason of a high degree. This strange agitation 
had now spread beyond New York, and secured the 
support of really able men. Judge McLean of the 
Supreme Court desired the Anti-Masonic nomina- 
tion ; William Wirt, the famous and accomplished 
Virginian, accepted it. John Quincy Adams would 
probably have accepted it, had it been tendered 
him. He wrote in his diary : ^^ The dissolution of 
the Masonic institution in the United States I be- 
lieve to be really more important to us and cur 
posterity than the question whether Mr. Clay or 
General Jackson shall be the president." In New 
York the National Republicans or Whigs, with the 
eager and silly leaning of minority parties to po- 
litical absurdities or vagaries, united with the Anti= 
Masons, among whom William H. Seward and 
Thurlow Weed had become influential. In 1830 
they had supported Francis Granger, the Anti- 
Masonic candidate for governor. In 1832 the 
Anti-Masons in New York nominated an electoral 



246 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ticket headed by Chancellor Kent, whose bitter, 
narrow, and unintelligent politics were in singular 
contrast with his extraordinary legal equipment 
and his professional and literary accomplishments, 
and by eTohn C. Spencer, lately in charge of the 
prosecution of Morgan's abductors. If the ticket 
were successful, its votes were to go to Wirt or 
Clay, whichever they might serve to elect. Amos 
EUmaker of Pennsylvania was the Anti-Masonic 
candidate for vice-president. In December, 1831, 
Clay had been nominated for president with the 
loud enthusiasm which politicians often mistake for 
widespread conviction. John Sergeant of Pennsyl- 
vania was the candidate for vice-president. The 
Whig Convention made the Bank re-charter the 
issue. The very ably conducted Young Men's 
National Republican Convention, held at Wash- 
ington in May, 1832, gave Clay a noble greeting, 
made pilgrimage to the tomb of Washington there 
to seal their solemn promises, and adopted a clear 
and brief platform for protection, for internal im- 
provements by the federal government, for the 
binding force upon the coordinate branches of the 
government of the Supreme Court's opinions as to 
constitutional questions, not only in special cases 
formally adjudged, but upon general principles, 
and aofainst the manner in which the West Indian 
trade had been recovered. They declared that "in- 
discriminate removal of public officers for a mere 
difference of political oj^inion is a gross abuse of 
power, corrupting the morals and dangerous to the 
liberties of the people of this country.'* 



CANDIDATE FOR VICE-PRESIDENT 247 

Even more clearly than in the campaign of 1828 
was the campaign of 1832 a legitimate political 
battle upon plain issues. The tariff bill of 1832, 
supported by both parties and approved by Jack- 
son, prevented the question of protection from 
being an issue, however ready the Whigs might 
be, and however unready the Democrats, to give 
commercial restrictions a theoretical approval. 
Except on the '"spoils" question, the later opinion 
of the United States has sustained the attitude of 
Jackson's party and the popular verdict of 1832. 
The verdict was clear enough. In spite of the 
Anti-Masonic fury, the numerous secessions from 
the Jacksonian ranks, and some alarming jour 
nalistic defections, especiall}'^ of the New York 
" Courier and Enquirer " of James Watson Webl 
and Mordecai M. Noah, the people of the United 
States continued to believe in Jackson and the 
principles for which he stood. Upon the popular 
vote Jackson and Van Buren received 687,502 
votes against 530,189 votes for Clay and Wirt 
combined, a popular majority over both of 157,313. 
In 1828 Jackson had had 647,276 votes and Adams 
508,064, a popular majority of 139,212. The in- 
crease in Jackson's popular majority over two can- 
didates instead of one was particularly significant 
in the north and east. The majority in New York 
rose from 5350 to 13,601. In Maine a minoritv 
of 6806 became a majority of 6087. In New 
Hampshire a minority of 3212 became a majority 
of 6476. In Massachusetts a minority of 23,860 



248 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

was reduced to 18,458. In Khode Island and Con. 
necticut the minorities were reduced. In New Jer- 
sey a minority of 1813 became a majority of 463. 
The electoral vote was even more heavily against 
Clay. He had but 49 votes to Jackson's 219. 
Wirt had the 7 votes of Vermont, while South 
Carolina, beginning to step out of the Union, gave 
its il votes to John Floyd of Virginia. Clay car-= 
ried only Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecti- 
cut, Delaware, a part of Maryland, and his own 
affectionate Kentucky. Van Buren received for 
vice-president the same electoral vote as Jackson, 
except that the 30 votes of Pennsylvania went to 
Wilkin s, a Pennsylvanian. Sergeant had the same 
49 votes as Clay, Ellmaker the 7 votes of Vermont, 
and Henry Lee of Massachusetts the 11 votes of 
South Carolina.^ 

This popular triumph brought great glory to 
Jackson's secern d inauguration. The glory was 
soon afterwards made greater and almost universal 
by his bold attack upon nullification, and by the 
vigorous and ringing yet dignified and even pa- 
thetic proclamation of January, 1833, drafted by 

1 In estimating the popular vote in 1828, Delaware and Soutli 
Carolina are exclnded, their electors having- been chosen by tht 
Ics^islatnre. In Georgia in that year there was no opposition to 
Jackson. In 18:32 no popular vote is included for South Carolina 
or for Alabama. In Mississippi and Missouri there was no oppo- 
sition to Jackson. In 1829, upon Van Buren's recommendation 
when governor, the system in New York of choosing- electors by 
districts, which had been in force in tlie election of 18-i8, was 
abolished ; and there was adopted the present system of choosing 
all the electors by the popular vote of the whole State. 



VICE-PRESIDENT 249 

Edward Livingston, in which the President com- 
manded obedience to the hiw and entreated for loy- 
alty to the Union. It could not be overlooked that 
the treasonable attitude of South Carolina had 
been taken by the portion of the Democratic party 
hostile to Yan Buren. In a peculiar way therefore 
he shared in Jackson's prestige. 

The election seemed to clarify some of the views 
of the administration. They now dared to speak 
more explicitly. On his way to the inauguration, 
Van Buren, declining a dinner at Philadelphia, 
recited with approval what he called Jackson's re- 
peated and earnest recommendations of " a reduc- 
tion of duties to the revenue standard." In his 
second inauoural Jackson said that there should 
be exercised " by the general government those 
powers only that are clearly delegated." In his 
message of December, 1833, he again spoke of 
" the importance of abstaining from all appropria- 
tions which are not absolutely required for the 
public interests, and authorized by the powers 
clearly delegated to the United States ; " and this 
he said with the more emphasis because under the 
compromise tariff of 1833 a large decrease in reve= 
nue was anticipated. 

In September, 1833, was announced Jackson's 
refusal longer to deposit the moneys of the govern- 
ment with the Banli of the United States. It is 
plain that the dangers of the proposed deposits 
of the moneys in the state banks were not appre- 
ciated. Van Buren at first opposed this so-called 



250 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

" removal of the deposits." Kendall tells of an 
interview with the Vice-President not long after 
Ills inauguration, and while he was a gnest at the 
White House. Van Buren then warndy remon- 
strated against the continued agitation of the sub- 
ject, after the resolution of the lower House at the 
last session that the government deposits were safe 
with the banks. Kendall replied that so certain to 
liis mind was the success of the Whig jiarty at the 
next presidential election and the consequent re- 
3harter of the Bank, unless it were now stripped 
of the power which the charge of the public moneys 
gave it, that if the Bank were to retain the deposits 
he should consider further opposition useless and 
^vould lay down his pen, leaving to others this ques- 
tion and all other politics. '' 1 can live," he said 
CO the Vice-President, '' under a corrupt despotism 
^^.s well as any other man by keeping out of its way, 
which I shall certainly do." They parted in excite- 
ment. A few weeks later Van Buren confessed to 
Kendall, " I had never thought seriously upon the 
deposit question until after my conversation with 
you ; I am now satisfied that you were right and I 
was wrong." Kendall was sent to asceitain whether 
suitable state banks would accept the deposits, and 
on what terms. While in New York V^an Buren, 
with McLane lately transferred from the Treasury 
to the State Department, called on him and pro- 
posed that the order for the change in the govern- 
ment depositories should take effect on the coming 
tirst of January. The date being a month after 



VICE-PRESIDENT 251 

tlie meeting of Congress, the executive action would 
seem less defiant ; and in the mean time the friends 
of the administration could be more effectually 
united in support of the measure. Kendall yielded 
to the proposition though against his judgment, and 
wrote to the President in its favor. But Jackson 
would not yield. Whether or not its first inspira- 
tion came from Francis P. Blair or Kendall, the 
removal of the deposits was peculiarly Jackson's 
own deed. The government moneys should not be 
left in the hands of the chief enemy of his admin- 
istration, to be loaned in its discretion, that it might 
secure doubtful votes in Congress and the support 
of presses pecuniarily weak. As the Bank's charter 
would expire within three years, it was pointed out 
that the government ought to prepare for it by with- 
holding further deposits and gradually drawing out 
tlie moneys then on deposit. Van Buren's assent 
was given, but probably with no enthusiasm. He 
disliked the Bank heartily enough. The corrupt- 
ing danger of intrusting government moneys to a 
single private corporation to loan in its discretion 
was clear. But a system of " pet banks " through 
the States was too slight an improvement, if an 
improvament at all. And any change would at 
least offend and alarm the richer classes. It is im= 
possible to say what effect upon the re-charter of 
the Bank and the election of 1836 its continued 
possession of the deposits would have had. Its 
tremendous power over credits doubtless gave it 
many votes of administration congressmen. Pos- 



252 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sibly, as Jackson and Blair feared, it might have 
secured enough to pass a re-charter over a veto. If 
it had been thus re-chartered, it may be doubtful 
whether the blow to the prestige of the administra- 
tion might not have been serious enough to elect a 
Whig in 1836. But it is not doubtful that Van 
Buren, and not Jackson, was compelled to face the 
political results of this heroic and imperfect mea- 
sure. 

Some financial disturbance took place in the 
winter of 1833-1834, which was ascribed by the 
Whigs to the gradual transfer of the government 
moneys from the United States Bank and its nu- 
merous branches to the state banks. For political 
efFect, this disturbance was oreatlv exaooerated. 
Deputations visited Washington to bait Jackson. 
Memorial after memorial enabled cono^i-essmen to 
make friends by complimenting the enterprise and 
beauty of various towns, and to depict the utter 
misery to which all their industries had been 
brought, solely by a gradual transference through- 
out the United States of #10,000.000, from one 
set of depositories to another. The removal, Web- 
ster said, had produced a degree of evil that could 
not be borne. " A tottering state of credit, craniped 
means, loss of property and loss of employment, 
doubts of the condition of others, doubts of their 
own condition, constant fear of failures and new 
explosions, and awful dread of the future " — all 
these evils, " without hope of improvement or 
change," had resulted from the removal. Clay 



VICE-PRESIDENT 253 

was more precise in his absurdity. The property 
of the country had been reduced, he dechircd, four 
hundred millions in value. Addressing Van Buren 
in tlie Vice-President's chair, he begged hinx in a 
burst of bathos to repair to the executive mansion 
and place before the chief magistrate the naked 
and undisguised truth. **• Go to him," he cried, 
" and tell him without exaggeration, but in the 
language of truth and sincerity, the actual con- 
dition of this bleeding country, ... of the tears 
of helpless widows no longer able to earn their 
bread, and of unclad and unfed orj)hans." Van 
Buren, in the story often quoted from Benton, while 
thus apostrophized, looked respectfully and inno- 
cently at Clay, as if treasuring up every word to 
be faithfully borne to the President ; and when 
Clay had finished, he called a senator to the chair, 
went up to the eloquent and languishing Ken- 
tuckian, asked him for a pinch of his fine macco- 
boy snuff, and walked away. But this frivolity 
was not fancied everywhere. At a meeting in 
Philadelphia it was resolved " that Martin Van 
Buren deserves and will receive the execrations of 
all good men, should he shrink from the responsi- 
bility of conveying to Andrew Jackson the message 
sent by the Honorable Henry Clay." The whole 
agitati(m was hollow enough. Jackson was not far 
wrong in saying in his letter to Hamilton of Janu- 
ary 2, 1834 : " There is no real general distress. 
It is only with those who live by borrowing, trade 
or loans, and the gamblers in stocks." The busi 



254 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ness of the country was not injured by refusing to 
let Nicholas Biddle and his subordinates, rather 
than other men, lend for gain ten millions of gov- 
ernment money. But business was soon to be in- 
jured by permitting the state banks to do the same 
thing. The change did not, as Jackson thought, 
" leave all to trade on their own credit and capital 
without any interference by the general government 
except using its powers by giving through its mint 
a specie currency." 

Van Buren took a permanent residence in Wash- 
ington after his inauguration as vice-president. He 
now held a rank accorded to no other vice-president 
before or since. He was openly adopted by the 
American Augustus, and seemed already to wear 
the title of Caesar. As no other vice-president has 
been, he was the chief adviser of the President, 
and as much the second officer of the government 
in power as in the dignity of his station. His 
only chance of promotion did not lie in the Presi- 
dent's death. That the President should live until 
after the election of 1836 was safely over, Van 
Buren had every selfish motive as well as many 
generous motives to desire. His ambition was no- 
wise disagreeable to his chief. To see that am- 
bition satisfied would gratify both patriotic and 
personal wishes of the tempestuous but not erratic 
old man in the White House. For there was 
the utmost intimacy and confidence between the 
two men. Van Buren had every reason, personal, 
pcUtical, and patriotic, to desire the entire sue- 



VICE-PRESIBENT 253 

cess of the administration. He was not only the 
second member of it ; but in his jealous and anx- 
ious watch over it he was preserving his own pa- 
trimony. His ability and experience were far 
greater than those of any other of its members. 
After Taney had been transferred from the attor^ 
ney-general's office to the Treasury, in September, 
1833, to make the transfer of the deposits, Jackscn 
appointed Benjamin F. Butler, Van Buren's inti» 
mate friend, his former pupil and partner, to Ta- 
ney's place. Louis McLane, Van Buren's prede- 
cessor in the mission to England, and his successor, 
after Edward Livingston, in the State Department, 
resiirned the latter office in the summer of 1834. 
He had disapproved Jackson's removal of the de- 
posits ; he believed it would be unpopular, and the 
presidential bee was buzzing in his bonnet. John 
Forsyth of Georgia, an admirer of Van Buren, and 
one of his defenders in the senatorial debate at 
the time of his rejection, then took the first place 
in the cabinet. Van Buren accompanied Jackson 
during part of the latter's visit to the Northeast 
in the summer of 1833, when as the adversary of 
nullification his popularity was at its highest, so 
high indeed that Harvard College, to Adams's 
disgust, made him a Doctor of Laws. But the 
exciting events of Jackson's second term hardly 
belong, with the information we yet have, to Van 
Buren's biography. They have been often and 
admirably told in the lives of Jackson and Clay, 
the seeming chiefs on the two sides of the long 
encounter. 



856 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Van Buren's nomination for the presidency, bit« 
cer as the opposition to it still was, came as matter 
of course. The large and serious secession of Cal- 
houn and his followers from the Jaeksonian party 
was followed by the later and more serious defec- 
tion of the Democrats who made a rival Demo- 
cratic candidate of Hugh L. White, a senator 
from Tennessee, and foiKierly a warm friend and 
adherent of Jackson. It was in White's behalf 
that Davy Crockett wrote, in 1835, his entertain- 
ing though scurrilous life of Van Buren. Jack- 
son's friendship for Van Buren, Crockett said, had 
arisen from his hatred to Calhoun, of which Van 
Buren, who was " secret, sly, selfish, cold, calculat- 
ing, distrustful, treacherous," had taken advantage. 
Jackson was now about to give up '' an old, long- 
tried, faithful friend. Judge White^ v/ho stuck to 
him through all his tribulations, helped to raise 
his fortunes from the beginning ; adventurers to- 
gether in a new country, friends in youth and in 
old age, fought together in the same battles, risked 
the same dangers, starved together in the same 
deserts, merely to gratify tiiis revengeful feeling." 
Van Buren was " as opposite to General Jackson 
as dung is to a diamond." 

It is difficult to find any justification for White's 
candidacy. He was a modest, dignified senator 
whose popularity in the Democratic Southwest ren- 
dered him available to Van Buren's enemies. But 
neither his abilities nor his services to the pub- 
lic or his party would have suggested him for 



VICE-PRESIDENT 257 

the presidency. Doubtless in him as with other 
modest, dignified men in history, there burned am- 
bition whose fire never burst into flame, and which 
perhaps for its suppression was the more trouble- 
some. He consented, apparently only for personal 
reasons, to head the Southern schism from Jackson 
and Van Buren ; and in his political destruction 
he paid the penalty usually and justly visited upon 
statesmen who, through personal hatred or jealousy 
or ambition, break party ties without a real differ- 
ence of principle. Benton said that White con- 
sented to run " because in his advanced age he did 
the act which, with all old men, is an experiment, 
and with most of them an unlucky one. He mar- 
ried again ; and this new wife having made an 
immense stride from the head of a boarding-house 
table to the head of a senator's table, could see no 
reason why she should not take one step more, and 
that comparatively short, and arrive at the head of 
the presidential table." 

The Democratic-Republican Convention met at 
Baltimore on May 20, 1835, nearly eighteen months 
before the election. There were over five hundred 
delegates from twenty-three States. South Caro- 
lina, Alabama, and Illinois were not i^epresented. 
Party organiz^ition was still very imperfect. The 
modern systei u of precise and proportional repre- 
sentations was not yet known. The States which 
approved the convention sent delegates in such 
number as suited their convenience. Maryland, 
the convention being held in its chief city, sent 



258 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

183 delegates; Virginia, close at hand, sent 102; 
New York, although the home of the proposed 
candidate, sent but 42, the precise number of its 
electoral votes. Tennessee csnt but one ; Missis- 
sippi and Missouri, only two each. In making 
the nominations, the delegates from each State, 
however numerous or few, cast a number of votes 
equal to its representation in the electoral college. 
The 183 delegates from Maryland cast therefore 
but ten votes ; while the single delegate from Ten- 
nessee, much courted man that he must have been, 
cast 15. 

It was the second national convention of the 
party. The members assembled at the " place of 
worship of the Fourth Presbyterian Church." In- 
stead of the firm and now long-recognized opening 
by tne chairman of the nation?.! committee j^ro- 
vided by the well-geared machinery of our later poli- 
tics, George Kremer of Pennsylvania first " stated 
the objects of the meeting." Andrew Stevenson of 
Virginia, the president, felt it necessary in his 
opening speech to defend the still novel party insti- 
tution. Efforts, he said, would be made at the 
approaching election to divide the Republican party 
and possibly to defeat an election by the people in 
their primary colleges. Their venerable president 
had advised, but in vain, constitutional amendments 
securing this election to the people, and preventing 
its falling to the House of Representatives. A 
national convention was the best means of concen- 
trating the popular will, the only defense against a 



VICE-PRESIDENT 259 

minority party. It was recommended by prudence, 
sanctioned by the precedent of 1832, and had 
proved effectual by experience. They must guard 
against local jealousies. "What, gentlemen," he 
said, " would you think of the sagacity and prudence 
of that individual who would propose the expedient 
of cutting up the noble ship that each man might 
seize his own plank and steer for himself ? " The in- 
quiries must be : Who can best preserve the unity 
of the Democratic party ? Who best understands 
the principles and motives of our government? 
Who will carry out the principles of the Jefferson- 
ian era and General Jackson's administration ? 
These demands clearly enough pointed out Van 
Buren. Prayers were then offered up " in a fer- 
vent, feeling manner." The rule requiring two 
thirds of the whole number of votes for a nomi- 
nation was again adopted, because " it would have 
a more imposing effect," though nearly half the 
convention, 210 to 231, tliought a majority was 
more " according to Democratic principles." Niles 
records that the formal motion to proceed to the 
nomination caused a smile among the members, so 
well settled was it that Van Buren was to be the 
nominee. He received the unanimous vote of the 
convention. A strong fight was made for the vice- 
presidency between the friends of Richard M. 
Johnson of Kentucky and William C. Rives of 
Virginia. The former received barely the two- 
thirds vote. The Virginia delegation upon the 
defeat of the latter did what would now be a sac- 



260 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

rilegious laying of violent hands on the ark. Party 
regularity was not yet so cliief a deity in the polit- 
ical temple. The Virginians liad, they said, an 
unpleasant duty to perform ; but they would not 
shrink from it. They would not support Johnson 
for the vice-presidency ; they had no confidence in 
his principles or his character ; they had come to 
the convention to support principles, not men ; 
they had already gone as far as possible in support- 
ing Mr. Van Buren, and they would not go further. 
Not long afterwards Rives left the party. No plat- 
form was adopted ; but a committee was appointed 
to pre23are an address to the people. 

The Whigs nominated General William Henry 
Harrison for the presidency and Francis Granger 
for the vice-presidency. They had but a forlorn 
hope of direct success. But the secession from 
the Democratic party of the nulliliers, and the more 
serious secession in the Southwest headed by White, 
made it seem possible to throw the election into 
the House. John Tyler of Virginia was the nom- 
inee of the bolting Democrats, for vice-president 
upon the ticket with AVhite. The Whigs of Mas- 
sachusetts preferred their unequaled orator ; for 
they then and afterwards failed to see, as the ad- 
mirers of some other famous Americans have failed 
to see, that other qualities make a truer equipment 
for the first office of the land than this noble art 
of oratory. South Carolina would vote against 
Calhoun's victorious adversary ; but she would not, 
in the first instance at least, vote with the Whig 
heretics. 



VICE-PRESIDENT 261 

It was a disorderly campaign, lasting a year and 
a half, and never reaching the supreme excitement 
of 1840 or 1844. The opposition did not deserve 
success. It had neither political principle nor dis= 
cipline. Calhonn described the Van Biiren men 
as " a powerful faction (party it cannot be called) 
held together by the hopes of public plunder and 
marchinir under a banner whereon is written * to 
the victors belong the spoils.' " There was in the 
rhetorical exaggeration enough truth perhaps to 
make an issue. But the political removals under 
Jackson were only incidentally touched in the can^ 
vass. Amos Kendall, then postmaster-general, to- 
wards the close of the canvass wrote a letter which, 
couiing from perhaps the worst of Jackson's " spoils- 
men, " shows how far public sentiment was even 
then from justifying the political interference of 
federal officers in elections. Samuel McKean, sen- 
ator from Pennsylvania, had written to Kendall 
complaining that three employees of the post-office 
had used the time and influence of their official 
stations to affect elections, by written communica^ 
tions and personal importunities. This, he said, 
was " a loathsome public nuisance," though admit- 
ting that since Kendall became postmaster-general 
he had given no cause of complaint. Kendall re- 
plied on September 27, 1836, that though it was 
difficult to draw the line between the rights of the 
citizen and the assumptions of the officeholder, hb 
thought it dangerous to our institutions that govern., 
ment employees should '* assume to direct public 



2G2 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

opinion and control the results of elections in tlie 
general or stat3 government." His advice to mem<. 
bers of his department was to keep as clear from 
political strife as possible, " to shun mere political 
meetings, or, if present, to avoid taking any part 
in their proceedings, to decline acting as members 
of political committees or conventions/' In making 
appointments he would prefer political friends ; but 
he " would not remove a good postmaster and hon- 
est man for a mere difference of political opinion." 
The complaints were for offenses committed under 
his predecessor ; one of the three offenders had 
left the service ; the other two had been fiee from 
criticism for seventeen months. There can be little 
doubt that the standard thus set up in public was 
higher than the general practice of Kendall or his 
subordinates ; but the letter showed that public 
sentiment had not yet grown callous to this odious 
abuse. 

Jackson did not permit the presidential office to 
restrain him from most vigorous and direct advocacy 
of Van Buren's claims. He begged Tennessee not 
to throw herself " into the embraces of the Federal- 
ists, the NuUifiers, or the new-born Whigs." They 
were living, he said, in evil times, when political 
aix)stasy had become frequent, when public men 
(referring to White, John Tyler, and others who 
had gone with them) were abandoning principle 
and their party attachment for selfish eiids. To 
this it was replied that the president's memory was 
treacherous ; that he had forgotten his early friends. 



VICE-PRESIDENT 262 

and listened only " to the voice of flattery and the 
siren voice of sycophancy." The dissenting Repub- 
licans affected to support administration measures, 
but protested against Jackson's dictating the suc- 
cession. They were the n, they said, '' what they 
were in 1828, — Jacksonians following the creed 
of that apostle of liberty, Thomas Jefferson." 

Without 2)rinciple as was this formidable seces- 
sion, it is impossible to feel much more respect for 
the declaration of principles made for the Whig 
candidates. Clay, the chief spokesman, complained 
that Jackson had killed with the ])()cket veto the 
land bill, which pro])osed to distribute the proceeds 
of the sales of public lands among the States ac- 
cording to their federal poj)ulation (which in the 
South inchided three fifths of the slaves), to be used 
for internal improvements, education, or other pur- 
poses. He pointed out, with ''• mixed feelings of 
pity and ridicule," that the few votes in the Senate 
ao'ainst the " deposit bill," which was to distribute 
the surplus among the States, had been cast by 
administration senators, since deserted by their 
numerous followers who demanded distribution. 
He rejoiced that Kentucky was to get a million 
and a half from the federal treasury. He de- 
nounced Jackson's "tampering with the currency" 
by the treasury order requiring public lands to be 
paid for in specie and not in bank-notes. Jack- 
son's treatment of the Cherokees seemed the only 
point of attack apart from his financial policy. 

The real party platformsi this year were curiously 



264 MARTIX VAN BUREN 

found in letters of the candidates to Sherrod Wii 
liams, an individual by no means distinguished. 
On April 7, 1836, he addressed a circular letter to 
Harrison, Van Buren, and White, asking each of 
them his opinions on five points : Did he approve 
a distribution of the surplus revenue among the 
States axicording to their federal population, for 
such uses as they might appoint ? Did he approve 
a like distribution of the proceeds of the sales of 
public lands ? Did he approve fetleral appropria- 
tions to improve navigable streams above ports of 
entry ? Did he approve another bank charter, if it 
should become necessary to preserve the revenue 
and finances of the nation ? Did he believe it con- 
stitutional to expunge from the records of a house 
of Congress any of its proceedings ? The last 
question referred to Benton's agitation for a reso- 
lution expunging from the records of the Senate 
the resolution of 1834, condemning Jackson's re- 
moval of the deposits as a violation of the Consti- 
tution. Harrison, for whose benefit the questions 
were put, returned what was supposed to be tho 
popular affirmative to the first three inquiries. 
The fourth he answered in the affirmative, and the 
fifth in the negative. Van Buren promptly pointed 
out to Williams that he doubted the right of an 
elector, who had already determined to oppose him, 
to put inquiries '"'' with the sole view of exposing, 
at his own time and the mode he nuiy select, the 
opinions of the candidate to unfriendly criticism.' 
but nevertheless promised a reply aftei Congress 



VICE-PRESIDENT 265 

had risen. This delay he deemed proper, because 
during the session he might, as president of the 
Senate, have to vote upon some of the questions. 
Williams replied that the excuse for delay was 
''' wholly and entirely unsatisfactory." Van Bureii 
curtly said that he should wait as he had stated. 
On August 8, not far from the time nowadays 
selected by presidential candidates for tlieir letters 
of acceptance, Van Buren addressed a letter to 
Williams, the prolixity of which seems a fault, but 
which, wlien newspapers were fewer and shorter, 
and reading was less multifarious, secured perhaps, 
from its length, a more ample and deliberate study 
from the masses of the people. 

For clearness and exj)licitness, and for cogency 
of argument, this letter has few equals among those 
written by presidential candidates. This most con- 
spicuous of Van Buren's preelection utterances has 
been curiously ignored by those who have accused 
him of '^ non-committalism." Congress, he said, 
does not possess the power under the Constitution 
to raise money for distribution among the States. 
If a distinction were justifiable, and of this he was 
not satisfied, between raising money for such a 
purpose and the distribution of an unexpected 
surplus, then the distribution ought not to be at- 
tempted without previous amendment of the Consti- 
tution. Any system of distribution must introduce 
vices into both the state and federal governments. 
It would be a great misfortune if the distribution 
bill already passed shoukl be deemed a pledge of 



266 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

like legislation in tlie future. So mucli of the 
letter has since largely had the approval of Anieri- 
can sentiment, and was only too soon emphasized 
by the miserable results of the bill thus condemned. 
The utterance was clear and v/ise ; and it was far 
more. It was a singularly bold attitude to assume, 
not only against the views of the opposition, but 
against a measure passed by Van Buren's own 
party friends and signed by Jackson, a measure 
having a vast and cheap popularity throughout the 
States which were supposed, and with too much 
truth, not to see that for what they took out of the 
federal treasury they would simply have to put so 
much more in. " I hope and believe," said Van 
Buren, " that the public voice will demand that 
this species of legislation shall terminate with the 
emergency that produced it." To the inquiry 
whether he would approve a distribution among 
the States of the proceeds of selling the public 
lands. Van Buren plainly said that if he were 
elected he would not favor the policy. These 
mone3^s, he declared, should be applied '' to the 
general wants of the treasury." To the inquiry 
whether he would approve appropriations to im- 
prove rivers above ports of entry, he quoted with 
approval Jackson's declaration in the negative. 
He would not go beyond expenditures for light- 
houses, buoys, beacons, piers, and the removal 
of obstructions in rivers and harbors below such 
ports. 

Upon the bank question, too, he left his IQ- 



VICE-PRESIDENT 267 

fcerrogator in no donbt. If the people wished a 
national bank as a permanent branch of their in- 
stitutions, or if they desired a chief magistrate who 
as to that woukl consider it his duty to watch the 
course of events and give or withhold his assent 
according to the supposed necessity, then another 
than himself must be chosen. And he added : "If, 
on the other hand, with this seasonable, explicit, 
and published avowal before them, a majority of 
the people of the United States shall nevertheless 
bestow upon me their suffrages for the office of 
president, skepticism itself must cease to doubt, 
and admit their will to be that there shall not be 
any Bank of the United States until the people, in 
the exercise of their sovereign authority, see fit to 
give to Congress the right to establish one." It 
was high time ••' that the federal government con- 
fine itself to the creation of coin, and that the 
States afford it a fair chance for circulation." 
With the power of either house of Congress to 
expunge from its records, he pointed out that the 
President could have no concern. But rather than 
avoid an answer, he said that he regarded the pas- 
sage of Colonel Benton's resolution as "an act of 
justice to a faithful and greatly injured public 
servant, not only constitutional in itself, but im- 
periously demanded by a proper respect for the 
well-known will of the people." 

This justly famous letter made up for the rather 
jejune and conventional letter of acceptance written 
a year before. Mot concealing his sensitiveness to 



268 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the charge of intrigue and management, Van Buren 
had then appealed to the members of the Demo- 
cratic convention, to the " editors and politicians 
throughout the Union " who had preferred him, to 
his " private correspondents and intimate friends," 
and to those, once his " friends and associates, 
whom the fluctuations of political life " had " con- 
verted into opponents." No man, he declared, 
could truly say that he had solicited political sup- 
port, or entered or sought to enter into any arrange- 
ment to procure him the nomination he had now 
received, or to elevate him to the chief magistracy. 
There was no public question of interest upon 
which his opinions had not been made known by 
his official acts, his own public avowals, and the 
authorized explanations of his friends. The last 
was a touch of the frankness which Van Buren 
used in vain to stop his enemies' accusations of 
indirectness. Instead of shielding himself, as pub- 
lic men usually and naturally do, behind Butler, 
th*^ attorney-general, and others who had spoken 
for him, he directly assumed responsibility for their 
** explanations." He considered himself selected 
to carry out the principles and policy of Jackson's 
administration, " happy," he said, '' if I shall be 
able to perfect the work which he has so gloriously 
beo'un." He closed with the theoretical declara- 
tion which consistently ran through his chief utter- 
ances, that, though he would " exercise the powers 
which of right belong to the general government 
in a spirit of moderation and brotherly love," he 



VICE-PRESIDENT 269 

would on the other hand " religiously abstain from 
the assumption of such as have not been delegated 
by the Constitution." 

Upon still another question Van Buren explicitly 
declared himself before the election. In 1835, 
the year of his nomination, appeared the cloud 
like a man's hand which was not to leave the sky 
until out of it had come a terrific, complete, and 
beneficent convulsion. Then openly and seriously 
began the work of the extreme anti-slavery men. 
Clay pointed out in his speech on colonization in 
1836 that " this fanatical class " of abolitionists 
" were none of your old-fashioned gradual emanci- 
pationists, such as Franklin, Rush, and the other 
wise and benevolent Pennsylvanians who framed 
the scheme for the gradual removal of slavery." 
He was right. Many of the new abolitionists were 
on the verge, or beyond it, of quiet respectability. 
Educated, intelligent, and even wealthy as some of 
them were, the abolitionists did not belonof to the 
always popular class of well-to-do folks content 
with the institutions of society. Most virtuous and 
religious people saw in them only wicked disturbers 
of the peace. All the comfortable, philosophical 
opponents of slavery believed that such wild and 
reckless agitators would, if encouraged, prostrate 
the pillars of civilization, and bring on anarchy, 
bloodshed, and servile wars worse even to the slaves 
than the wrongs of their slavery. But to the mem- 
bers of the abolition societies which now rose, this 
was no abstract or economical question. They 



270 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

were undaunted by the examples of Washington 
and Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who, whatever 
they said or hoped against slavery, nevertheless 
held human beings in bondage ; or of Adams and 
other Northern adherents of the Constitution, who 
for a season at least had joined in a pact to pro- 
tect the infamous slave traffic. To them, talk of 
the sacred Union, or of the great advance which 
negroes had made in slavery and would not have 
made in freedom, was idle. With unquenched 
vision they saw the horrid picture of the individual 
slave life, not the general features of slavery ; they 
saw the chain, the lash, the brutalizing and con- 
trived ignorance ; they saw the tearing apart of 
families, with their love and hope, precisely like 
those of white men and women, crushed out by 
detestable cruelty ; they saw the beastly disso- 
luteness inevitable to the plantation system. Nor 
would they be still, whatever the calm preach- 
ing of political wisdom, whatever the sincere and 
weighty insolence of men of wisdom and upright- 
ness and property. Northern men of 1888 must 
look with a real shame upon the behavior of 
their fathers and grandfathers towards the narrow, 
fiery, sometimes almost hateful, apostles of human 
rights ; and with even greater shame upon the talk 
of the sacred right of white men to make brutes of 
black men, a right to be treated, as the best of 
Americans were so fond of saying, with a tender 
and affectionate regard for the feelings of the 
white slave-masters. About the same time began 



VICE-PRESIDENT 271 

the continual presentation to Congress of petitions 
for the abolition of slavery, and the foolish but 
Heaven-ordained attack of slaveholders on the risht 
of petition. The agitation rapidly flaming up was 
far different from the practical and truly political 
discussion over the Missouri Compromise fifteen 
years before. 

As yet, indeed, the matter was not politically 
im23ortant, except in the attack upon Van Buren 
made by the Southern members of his party. Six- 
teen years before, he had voted against admitting 
more slave States. He had aided the reelection of 
Rufus King, a determined enemy of slavery. He 
had strongly opposed Calhoun and the Southern 
nullifiers. In the " Evening Post " and the *•• Plain- 
dealer " of New York appeared from 1835 to 1837 
the really noble series of editorials by William 
Leggett, strongly proclaiming the right of free 
discussion and the essential wrong of slavery ; al- 
though sometimes he condemned the fanaticism 
now aroused as " a species of insanity.^' The 
" Post " strongly supported Van Buren, and was 
declared at the South to be his chosen organ for 
addressing the public. It denied, however, that 
Van Buren had any " connection in any way or 
shape with the doctrines or movements of the abo- 
litionists." But such denials were widely disbe- 
lieved by the slaveholders. It was declared that 
he had a deep agency in the Missouri question 
which fixed upon him a support of abolition ; his 
denials were answered by the anti-slavery petitions 



272 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

from twenty thousand memorialists in liis own State 
of New York, and by the support brought him by 
the enemies of slavery. To all this the Whig 
" dough-faces " listened with entire satisfaction. 
They must succeed, if at all, through Southern dis- 
trust or dislike of Van Buren. In Juh% 1834, he 
had publicly written to Samuel Gwin of Mississipj^i 
that his opinions upon the power of Congress over 
slave property in the Southern States were so well 
understood by his friends that he was surprised 
that an attempt should be made to deceive the 
public about them ; that slavery was in his judg- 
ment ^' exclusively under the control of the state 
governments;" that no "contrary opinion to an 
extent deserving consideration " was entertained in 
any part of the United States : and that, without a 
change of the Constitution, no interference with it 
in a State could be had " even at the instance of 
either or of all the slaveholding States." But, it 
was said, " Tappan, Garrison, and every other fa- 
natic and abolitionist in the United States not en- 
tirely run mad, will grant that." And, indeed, 
Abraham Lincoln was nominated twenty-four years 
later upon a like declaration of '' the right of each 
State to order and control its own domestic institu- 
tions according to its own judgment exclusively." 

The District of Columbia, however, was one bit 
of territory in which Congress doubtless had the 
power to abolish slavery. In our better days it 
would seem to have been a natural enough impulse 
to seek to make free soil at least of the capital 



VICE-PRESIDENT 273 

of the land of freedom. But the District lay be- 
tween and was completely surrounded by two slave 
States. Washington had derived its laws and 
custouis from Maryland. If the District were 
free while Virginia and Maryland were slave, it 
was feared with much reason that there would 
arise most dangerous collisions. Its perpetual 
slavery was an unforeseen j^art of the price Alex- 
ander Hamilton had paid to procure the federal 
assumption of the war debts of the States. In 
Van Buren's time there was almost complete 
acquiescence in the proposition that, though sla- 
very had in the District no constitutional protec- 
tion, it must still be deemed there a part of the 
institution in Virginia and Maryland. How clear 
was the understanding may be seen from language 
of undoubted authority. John Quincy Adams had 
hitherto labored for causes which have but cold 
and formal interest to posterity. But now, leav- 
ing the field of statesmanship, where his glory 
had been meagre, and, fortunately for his reputa- 
tion, with the shackles of its responsibility no 
longer upon him, the generous and exalted love of 
humanity began to touch his later years with the 
abiding splendor of heroic and far-seeing courage. 
He became the first of the great anti-slavery lead- 
ers. He entered for all time the group of men, 
Garrison, Lovejoy, Giddings, Phillips, Sumner, 
and Beecher, to whom so largely we owe the 
second and nobler salvation of our lando But 
Adams was emphatically opposed to the abolition 



274 MARTIN VAX BUREN 

of slavery in the District. In December, 1831, 
the first month of his service in the House, on 
presenting a petition for such abolition, he de- 
clared that he should not support it. In Feb- 
ruary, 1837, a few days before Van Buren's inau- 
guration, there occurred the scene when Adams, 
with grim and dauntless irony, brought to the 
House the petition of some slaves against abolition. 
In his speech then he said : '' From the day I 
entered this House down to the present moment, 
I have invariably here, and invariably elsewhere, 
declared my opinions to be adverse to the prayer 
of petitions which call for the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia." 

It is a curious but inevitable impeachment of 
the impartiality of history that for a declaration 
precisely the same as that made by a great and 
recognized apostle of anti-slavery, and made by 
that apostle in a later year. Van Buren has been 
denounced as a truckler to the South, a " Northern 
man with Southern principles." Van Buren's de- 
claration was made, not like Adams's in the easy 
freedom of an independent member of Congress 
from an anti-slavery district, but under the con- 
straint of a presidential nomination jiartially com- 
inof from the South. In the canvass before his 
election, Van Buren gave perfectly fair notice of 
his intention. '' I must go," he said, " into the 
presidential chair the inflexible and uncompro- 
mising opponent of every attempt on the part of 
Congress to abolish slavery in the District of 



VICE-PRESIDENT 275 

Columbia against the wishes of the slaveholcling 
States." This was the attitude, not only of Van 
Buren and Adams, but of every statesman North 
and South, and of the entire North itself with 
insignificant exceptions. The former's explicit 
declaration was doubtless aimed at the pro-slavery 
jealousy stirred up against himself in the South ; 
it was intended to have political effect. But it 
was none the less the unambiguous expression of 
an opinion sincerely shared with the practically 
unanimous sense of the country. 

A skillful effort was made to embarrass Van 
Buren with his Southern supporters over a more 
difficult question. The anti-slavery societies at 
the North sought to circulate their literature at 
the South. So strong an enemy of slavery as 
William Leggett condemned this as "fanatical 
obstinacy," obviously tending to stir up at the 
South insurrections, whose end no one could fore- 
see, and as the fruit of desperation and extrava- 
gance. The Southern States by severe laws for- 
bade the circulation of the literature. Its receipts 
from Southern post-offices led to great excitement 
and even violence. In August, 1835, Kendall, the 
postmaster-general, was appealed to by the post- 
master at Charleston, South Carolina, for advice 
whether he should distribute papers "inflamma- 
tory, and incendiary, and insurrectionary in the 
highest degree," papers whose very custody en- 
dangered the mail. Kendall, in an extraordinary 
letter, said that he had no legal authority to pro- 



276 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

hibit the delivery of papers on account of their 
character, but that he was not prepared to direct 
the delivery at Charleston of pa23ers such as were 
described. Gouverneur, the postmaster at New 
York, being then appealed to by his Charleston 
brother, declined to forward papers mailed by the 
American Anti-Slavery Society. This dangerous 
usurpation was defended upon the principle of 
salus pojndi snpy^ema lex. 

In December, 1835, Jackson called the attention 
of Congress to the circulation of ''inflammatory 
appeals addressed to the passions of the slaves " 
(as they used to call the desire of black men to be 
free), "calculated to stimulate them to insurrection 
and produce all the horrors of a servile war." A 
bill was introduced making it unlawful for any 
postmaster knowingly to deliver any printed or 
pictorial paper touching the subject of slavery 
in States by whose laws their circulation was pro- 
hibited. Webster condemned the bill as a federal 
violation of the freedom »of the press. Clay 
thought it unconstitutional, vague, indefinite, and 
unnecessary, as the States could lay hold of citi- 
zens taking such j3ublications from post-offices 
within their borders. Benton and other senators, 
several of them Democrats, and seven from slave- 
holding States, voted against the bill, because they 
were, so Benton said, " tired of the eternal cry of 
dissolving the Union, did not believe in it, and 
would not give a repugnant vote to avoid the 
trial." The debate did not reach a very exalted 



VICE-PRESIDENT 277 

height. The question was by no means free from 
doubt. Anti-slavery papers probably were, as the 
Southerners said, " incendiary " to their States. 
Slavery depended upon ignorance and fear. The 
federal post-office no doubt was intended, as Ken- 
dall aro'ued, to be a convenience to the various 
States, and not an offense against their codes of 
morality. There has been little opposition to the 
present prohibition of the use of the post-office for 
obscene literature, or, to take a better illustration, 
for the circidars of lotteries which are hiwful in 
some States but not in others. 

When the bill came to a vote in the Senate, 
although there was really a substantial majority 
against it, a tie was skillfully arranged to compel 
Van Buren, as Vice-President, to give the castinu; 
vote. White, the Southern Democratic candidate 
so seriously menacing him, was in the Senate, and 
voted for the bill. Van Buren must, it was sup- 
posed, offend the pro-slavery men by voting against 
the bill, or offend the North and perhaps bruise 
his conscience by voting for it. When the roll 
was being called, Van Buren, so Ronton tells us, 
was out of the chair, walking behind the colonnade 
at the rear of the vice-president's seat. Calhoun, 
fearful lest he might escape the ordeal, eagerly 
asked where he was, and told the sergeant-at-arms 
to look for him. But Van Buren was ready, and 
at once stepped to his chair and voted for the bill. 
His close friend, Silas Wright of New York, also 
voted for it. Benton says he deemed both the 



278 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

votes to be political and given from policy. So 
they probably were. To Van Buren all the fire- 
eating measures of Calhoun and the pro-slavery 
men were most distasteful. He probably thought 
the bill would do more to increase than allay agita- 
tion at the North. Walter Scott, when the prince 
regent toasted him as the author of '' AVaverley," 
feeling that even royal highness had no right in 
a numerous company to tear away the long kept 
and valuable secrecy of " the great Unknown," rose 
and gravely said to his host : " Sire, I am not the 
author of ' Waverley.' " There were, he thought, 
questions which did not entitle the questioner to 
be told the truth. So Van Buren may have 
thought there were political interrogations which, 
being made for sheer party purposes, might right- 
fully be answered for like purposes. Since the 
necessity for his vote was contrived to injure him 
and not to help or hurt the bill, he probably felt 
justified so to vote as best to frustrate the design 
against him. This persuasive casuistry usually 
overcomes a candidate for great office in the stress 
of conflict. But lenient as may be the judgment 
of party supporters, and distressing as may seem 
the necessity, the untruth pretty surely returns to 
plague the statesman. Van Buren never deserved 
to be called a " Northern man with Southern prin- 
ciples." But this vote came nearer to an excuse 
for the epithet than did any other act of his career. 
The election proved how large was the Southern 
defection. Georgia and Tennessee, which had been 



VICE-PRESIDENT 279 

almost unanimous for Jackson in 1836, now voted 
for White. Mississippi, where in that year there 
had been no opposition, and Louisiana, where 
Jackson had eight votes to Clay's five, now gave 
Van Buren majorities of but three hundred each. 
In North Carolina Jackson had had 24,862 votes, 
and Clay only 4563 ; White got 23,626 to 26,910 
for Van Buren. In Virginia Jackson had three 
times the vote of Clay ; Van Buren had but one 
fourth more votes than White. In Benton's own 
State, so nearly unanimous for Jackson, White 
had over 7000 to Van Buren's 11,000. But in 
the Northeast Van Buren was very strong. Jack- 
son's majority in Maine of 6087 became a majority 
of 7751 for Van Buren. New Hampshire, the 
home of Hill and Woodbury, had given Jackson 
a majority of 6376 ; it gave Van Buren over 
12,000. The Democratic majority in New York 
rose from less than 14,000 to more than 28,000, 
and this majority was rural and not urban. The 
majority in New York city was but about 1000. 
Of the fifty -six counties, Van Buren carried 
forty-two, while nowadays his political successors 
rarely carry more than twenty. Connecticut had 
given a majority of 6000 for Clay; it gave Van 
Buren over 500. Rhode Island had voted for 
Clay ; it now voted for Van Buren. Massachu- 
setts was carried for Webster by 42,247 against 
34,474 for Van Buren ; Clay had had 33,003 to 
only 14,545 for Jackson. But New Jersey shifted 
from Jackson to Harrison, although a very close 



280 



MARTIN VAN BUREN 



State at both elections ; and in Pennsylvania, 
Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, Van Buren fell far 
behind Jackson. The popular vote, omitting South 
Carolina, where the legislature chose the ele('tors, 
was as follows : — 



Van Buren . . 

Harrison, White, 
and Webster . 



New 
England. 


Middle 
States. 


South. 


West. 


112,480 

106,169 


310,203 
282,376 


141,942 
138,059 


198,053 
209,046 



Total. 

762,678 
735,650 



The electoral votes were thus divided : 



Total. 



Van Buren 
Harrison . 
Webster . 
White . . 



New 
England 


Middle 

States. 


South. 


West. 


29 

7 
14 


72 
21 


57 
26 


I? 



170 
73 
14 

26 



Van Buren thus came to the presidency sup- 
ported by the great Middle States and New Eng- 
land against the West, with the South divided. 
Omitting the uncontested reelection of Monroe in 
1820, and the almost uncontested reelection of 
Jefferson in 1804, Van Buren was the first Demo- 
cratic candidate for president who carried New 
England. He had there a clear majority in both 
the electoral and the popular vote. Nor has any 
Democrat since Van Buren obtained a majority of 
the popular vote in that strongly thinking and 
strongly prejudiced community. Pierce, against 
the feeble Whig candidacy of Scott, carried its 
electoral vote in 1852, but by a minorit}'^ of its 



ELECTION TO THE PRESIDENCY 281 

popular vote, and only because of the large Free 
Soil vote for Hale. No other Democrat since 1852 
has had any electoral vote from New England out- 
side of Connecticut. Virginia refused its vote to 
Johnson, who, in the failure of either candidate to 
receive a majorit}' of the electoral vote, was chosen 
vice-president by the Senate. 

When the electoral votes were formally counted 
before the houses of Congress, the result, so con- 
temporary record informs us, was ''received with 
perfect decorum by the House and galleries." 
Enthusiasm was going out with Jackson, to come 
back again with Harrison. Van Buren's election 
was the success of intellectual convictions, and not 
the triumph of sentiment. He had come to power 
as "the House and galleries" well knew, in "per- 
fect decorum." Not a single one of the generous 
but sometimes cheap and fruitless rushes of feeling 
occasionally so potent in politics had helped him 
to the White House. Not that he was ungenerous 
or lacking in feeling. Very far from it ; few men 
have inspired so steady and deep a political attach- 
ment among men of strong character and patriotic 
aspirations. But neither in his person nor in his 
speech or conduct was there anything of the strong 
picturesqueness which impresses masses of men, 
who must be touched, if at all, by momentary 
glimpses of great men or by vivid phrases which 
become current about them. His election was no 
more than a triumph of disciplined good sense and 
political wisdom. 



CHAPTER VIII 

CRISIS OF 1837 

On March 4, 1837, Jackson and Van Buren 
rode together from the White House to the Capitol 
in a " beautiful phaeton " made from the timber of 
the old frigate Constitution, tlie gift to the general 
from the Democrats of New York city. He was 
the third and last president who has, after serving 
through his term, left office amid the same en- 
thusiasm which attended him when he entered 
it, and to whom the surrender of place has not 
been full of those pangs wdiich attend sudden loss 
of power, and of which the certain anticij^ation 
ought to moderate ambition in a country so rarely 
permitting a long and continuous public career. 
Washington, amid an almost unanimous love and 
reverence, left a station of which he was unaffect- 
edly weary ; and he was greater out of office than in 
it. Jefferson and Jackson remained really power- 
ful characters. Neither at Montieello nor at the 
Hermitage, after their masters had returned, was 
there any lack of the incense of sincere 23opular 
flattery or of the appeals for the exercise of admit- 
ted and enormous influence, in which lies much ot 
the unspeakable fascination of a great public sta- 
tion. 



CRISIS OF 1837 283 

Leavinof the White House under a still and bril- 
liant sky, the retiring and incoming rulers had such 
a popular and military attendance as without much 
order or splendor has usually gone up Capitol Hill 
with our presidents. Van Buren's inaugural speech 
was heard, it is said, by nearly twenty thousand 
persons ; for he read it with remarkable distinctness 
and in a quiet air, from the historic eastern portico. 
He returned from the inauguration to his private- 
residence ; and with a fine deference insisted upoB 
Jackson remaining in the White House until hia 
departure, a few days later, for Tennessee. Vaix 
Buren in his own carriage took Jackson to the^ 
terminus of the new railway upon which the journey 
home was to begui. He bade the old man a most 
affectionate farewell, and promised to visit him a^- 
the Hermitage in the summer. 

The new cabinet, with a single exception, v/as 
the same as Jackson's : John Forsyth of Georgia^ 
secretary of state ; Levi Woodbury of New Hamp- 
shire, secretary of the treasury ; Mahlon Dickerson 
of New Jersey, secretary of the rtavy ; Kendall, 
postmaster-general ; and Butler, attorney-general. 
Joel R. Poinsett, a strong union man among the 
nullifiers of South Carolina, became secretary of 
war. Cass had left this place in 1836 to be minis- 
ter to France, and Butler had since temporarily 
filled it, as well as his own post of attorney-general. 
The cabinet had indeed been largely Van Buren's, 
two years and more before he was president. 

Van Buren's inaugural address began again with 



2S4: MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the favorite touch of humility, but it now had an 
agreeable dignity. He was, he said, the first presi- 
dent born after the Kevolution ; he belonged to a 
later age than his illustrious predecessors. Nor 
ought he to expect his countrymen to weigh his 
actions with the same kind and jmrtial hand which 
they had used towards worthies of Revolutionary 
times. But he piously looked for the sustaining 
support of Providence, and the kindness of a peo- 
ple who had never yet deserted a public servant 
honestly laboring in their cause. There was the 
usual congratulation upon American institutions 
and history. We were, he said, — and the boast 
tliouofh not so delightful to the taste of a later time 
was perfectly true, — without a parallel throughout 
the world " in all the attributes of a great, happy, 
and flourishing people." Though we restrained 
government to the '* sole legitimate end of political 
institutions," we reached the Benthamite '' greatest 
happiness of the greatest number," and presented 
"an aggregate of human prosperity surely not else- 
where to be found." We must, by observing the 
limitations of government, perpetuate a condition 
of things so singularly happy. Popular govern- 
ment, whose failure had fifty years ago been boldly 
predicted, had now been found *' wanting in no 
element of endurance or strength." His policy 
should be " a strict adherence to the letter and 
spirit of the constitution . . , viewing it as limited 
to national objects, regarding it as leaving to the 
people and the States all power not explicitly parte(J 



CRISIS OF 1837 285 

with/' Upon one question he spoke precisely. For 
the first time slavery loomed up in the inaugural 
of an American president. It seemed, however, 
at once to disappear from politics in the practically 
unanimous condemnation of the abolition agitation, 
an agitation which, though carried on for the no^ 
blest purposes, seemed — for such is the march of 
human rights — insane and iniquitous to most pa- 
triotic and intelligent citizens. Van Buren quoted 
the explicit declaration made by him before the 
election against the abolition of slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia without the consent of the slave 
States, and against '^ the slightest interference with 
it in the States where it exists." Not a word was 
said of the extension of slavery in the Territories. 
That question still slept under the potion of the 
Missouri Compromise, to wake with the acquisition 
of Texas. In Van Buren's declaration there was 
nothing in the sKghtest degree inconsistent even 
with the Republican platforms of 1856 and 1860. 

The inaugural concluded with a fine tribute to 
Jackson. ^'''l know," Van Buren said, ^Hhat^ 1 
cannot expect to perform the arduous task with 
equal ability and success. But united as I^ have 
been in his counsels, a daily witness of his ex- 
clusive and unsurpassed devotion to his country's 
welfare, agreeing with him in sentiments which his 
countrymen have warmly supported, and permitted 
to partake largely of his confidence, I may hope 
that somewhat of the same cheering approbation 
will be found to attend upon my path. For hinj 



286 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

I but express, with my own, the wishes of all, that 
he may yet long live to enjoy the brilliant evening 
of his well-spent life." 

The lucid optimism of the speech was in perfect 
temper with this one of those shining and mellow 
days, which even March now and then brings to 
Washington. But there was latent in the atmos- 
phere a storm, carrying with it a furious and 
complete devastation. In the month before the 
inauguration, Benton, upon whom Van Buren was 
pressing a seat in the cabinet, told the President- 
elect that they were on the eve of an explosion of 
the paper-money system. But the latter offended 
Benton by saying: "Your friends think you a little 
exalted in the head on the subject." And doubt- 
less the prophecies of the Bank opponents had been 
somewhat discredited by the delay of the disaster 
which was to justify their denunciations. The pro- 
foundly thrilling and hidden delight which comes 
with the first taste of supreme power, even to the 
experienced and battered man of affairs, had been 
enjoyed by Van Buren only a few days, when the 
air grew heavy about him, and then perturbed, and 
then violently agitated, until in two months broke 
fiercely and beyond all restraint the most terrific 
of commercial convulsions in the United States. 
Since Washington began the experiment of our 
federal government amid the sullen doubts of ex- 
treme Federalists and extreme Democrats, no pre- 
sident, save only Abraham Lincoln, has had to face 
at the outset of his presidency so appalling a polit 
\cn} situation. 



CRISIS OF 1837 287 

The causes of the panic of 1837 lay far deeper 
than in the complex processes of banking or in the 
faults of federal administration of the finances. 
But, as a man suddenly ill prefers to find for his 
ailment some recent and obvious cause, and is not 
convinced by even a long and dangerous sickness 
that its origin lay in old and continued habits of 
life, so the greater part of the American people 
and of their leaders believed this extraordinary 
crisis to be the result of financial blunders of 
Jackson's administration. They believed that Van 
Buren could with a few strokes of his pen repair, if 
he pleased, those blunders, and restore commercial 
confidence and prosperity. The panic of 1837 be- 
came, and has very largely remained, the subject of 
political and partisan differences, which obscure its 
real phenomena and causes. The far-seeing and 
patriotic intrepidity with which Van Buren met its 
almost overwhelming difficulties is really the crown 
of his political career. Fairly to appreciate the 
service he then rendered his country, the causes of 
this famous crisis must be attentively considered. 

In 1819 the United States suffered from com- 
mercial and financial derangement, which may be 
assumed to have been the effect of the second war 
with Great Britain. The enormous waste of a 
great war carried on by a highly organized nation 
is apt not to become obvious in general business 
distress until some time after the war has ended. 
A buoyant extravagance in living and in com- 
mercial and manufacturing ventures will continue 



288 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

after a peace has brought its extraordinary pro- 
mises, upon the faith of which, and in joyful igno- 
rance, the evil and inevitable day is postponed. 
All this was seen later and on a vaster scale from 
1865 to 1873. In 1821 the country had quite 
recovered from its depression ; and from this time 
on to near the end of tTackson's administration the 
United States saw a material prosperity, doubtless 
greater than any before known. The exuberant 
outburst of John Quincy Adams's message of 1827, 
— that the productions of oar soil, the exchanges 
of our commerce, the vivifying labors of human 
industry, had combined " to mingle in our cup a 
portion of enjoyment as large and liberal as the 
indulgence of Heaven has perhaps ever granted to 
the imperfect state of man upon earth," — was in 
the usual tone of the public utterances of our pre- 
sidents from 1821 to 1837. Our harvests were 
always great. We were a chosen people delighting 
in reminders from our rulers of our prosperity, and 
not restless under their pious urgency of perennial 
gratitude to Providence. In 1821 the national 
debt had slightly increased, reaching upwards of 
190,000,000; but from that time its steady and 
rapid payment went on until it was all discharged iu 
1834. Our cities grew. Our population stretched 
eagerly out into the rich Mississippi valley. From 
a population of ten millions in 1821, we reached 
sixteen millions in 1837. New York from about 
1,400,000 became 2,200,000; and Pennsylvania 
from about 1,000,000 became 1,600,000. But the 



CRISIS OF 1837 289 

amazing growth was at the West — Illinois from 
60,000 to 400,000, Indiana from 170,000 to 600,- 
000, Ohio from 600,000 to 1,400,000, Tennessee 
from 450,000 to 800,000. Missouri had increased 
her 70,000 five-fold ; Mississippi her 80,000 four- 
fold ; Michigan her 10,000 twenty-fold. Iowa and 
Wisconsin were entirely unsettled in 1821 ; m 
1837 the fertile lands of the former maintained 
nearly forty thousand and of the latter nearly 
thirty thousand hardy citizens. New towns and 
cities rose with magical rapidity. With much that 
was unlovely there was also exhibited an amaznig 
energy and capacity for increase in wealth. The 
mountain barriers once passed, not only by adven- 
turous pioneers but by the pressing throngs of set- 
tlers, there were few obstacles to the rapid creation 
of comfort and wealth. Nor in the Mississippi 
valley and the lands of the Northwest were the 
settlers met by the harsh soil, the hostilities and 
reluctance of nature in whose conquest upon the 
Atlantic seaboard the American people had gained 
some of their strongest and most enduring charac- 
teristics. We hardly realize indeed how much bet- 
ter it was for after times that our first settlements 
were dilEcult. In the easy opening and tillage of 
the rich and sometimes rank lands at the West 
there was an inferior, a less arduous disciplhie. 
American temper there rushed often to speculation, 
rather than to toil or venture. It did not seem 
necessary to create wealth by labor ; the treasures 
lay ready for those first reaching the doors of tha 



290 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

treasure house. To make easy the routes to El 
Dorado of prairies and river bottoms was the 
quickest way to wealth. 

Roads, canals, river improvements, preceded, at- 
tended, followed these sudden settlements, this vast 
and jubilant movement of population. There was 
an extraordinary growth of '' internal improve- 
ments." In his message of 1831, Jackson rejoiced 
at the high wages earned by laborers in the con- 
struction of these works, which he truly said were 
"extending with unprecedented rapidity." The 
constitutional power of the federal government to 
promote the improvements within the States be- 
came a serious question, because the improvements 
proposed were upon so vast a scale. No single in- 
terest had for fifteen years before 1837 held so 
large a part of American attention as did the 
making of canals and roads. The debates of Con- 
gress and legislatures, the messages of presidents 
and governors, were full of it. If the Erie Canal, 
finished in 1825, had rendered vast natural re- 
sources available, and had made its chief builder 
famous, why should not like schemes prosper fur- 
ther west? The success of railroads was already 
established ; and there was indefinite promise in 
the extensions of them already planned. In 1830 
twenty-three miles had been constructed ; in 1831 
ninety-four miles ; and in 1836 the total construc- 
tion had risen to 1273 miles. 

The Americans were then a far more homogene- 
\)U3 people than they are to-day. The great Irish, 



CRISIS OF 1837 291 

German, and Scandinavian immigrations had not 
taken place. Our race diversities were, with ex- 
ceptions, unimportant in extent or lost in the laj^se 
of time, the diversities merely of British descend- 
ants. Nor were there the extremes of fortune or 
the diversities of occupation which have come with 
the growth of cities and manufacturing interests. 
The United States were still a nation of farmers. 
The compensations and balances, which in the vary- 
ing habits and prejudices of a more varied popula- 
tion tend to restrain and neutralize vagaries, did 
not exist. One sentiment seized the whole nation 
far more readily than could happen in the complex- 
ity of our modern po])ulation and the diversity and 
rivalry of its strains. Not only did this homogene- 
ity make Americans open to single impulses ; but 
there was little essential difference of environment. 
They all, since the later days of Monroe's presi- 
dency, had lived in the atniosuhere of oflicial de- 
light and congratulation over the past, and of un- 
restrained promise for the future. All, whether in 
the grain fields at the North or the cotton fields at 
the South, had behind them the Atlantic with tra- 
ditions or experiences of poverty and oppression 
beyond it. Every American had, in his own lati- 
tude, since the ampler opening of roads and water- 
ways, and the peaceful conquest of the Appalachian 
mountain ranges, seen to the west of him fertility 
and promise and performance. And the fertility and 
promise had, since the second English war, been no 
longer in a land of hardship and adventure remote 



292 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

and almost foreign to the seaboard. Every Amer- 
ican under Jackson's administration liad before 
liim^ as the one universal experience of those who 
had taken lands at the West, an enormous and cer- 
tain increase of value, full of enchantment to those 
lately tilling- the flinty soil of New England or the 
overused fields of the South. If new lands at the 
West could be made accessible by internal im- 
provements, the succession of seed time and har- 
vest had for a dozen years seemed no more certain 
than that the value of those lands would at once 
increase prodigiously. So the American people 
with one consent gave themselves to an amazing 
extravagance of land speculation. The Eden which 
Martin Chuzzlewit saw in later malarial decay was 
to be found in the new country on almost every 
stream to the east of the Mississippi and on many 
streams west of it, where flatboats could be floated. 
Frauds there doubtless were ; but they were inci- 
dental to the honest delusion of intelligent men 
inspired by the most extraordinary growth the 
world had seen. The often quoted illustration of 
Mobile, the valuation of whose real estate rose 
from -fl,294,810 in 1831 to $27,482,961 in 1837, 
to sink again in 1846 to $8,638,250, not unfairly 
tells the story. In Pensacola, lots which to-day 
are worth 850 each were sold for as much as lots 
on Fifth Avenue in New York, wdiich to-day are 
w^orth #100,000 a]nece.' Real estate in the latter 
city was assessed in 1836 at more than it was in 
the greatly larger and richer city of fifteen years 



CRISIS OF 1837 293 



later. From 1830 to 1837 the steamboat tonnage 
on the Western rivers rose from 63,053 to 253,661. 
From 1833 to 1837 the cotton crop of the newer 
slave States, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, 
Louisiana, Arkansas and Florida, increased from 
536,450 to 916,960 bales, while the price with 
fluctuations rose from ten to twenty cents a pound. 
Foreign capital naturally enough came to share in 
the splendid money-makingo From 1821 to 1833 
the annual import of specie from England had 
averaged about '$100,000, in the last year being 
only 131,903 ; but in 1834 it became 15,716,253, 
in 1835 $914,958, and in 1836 $2,322,920, the en- 
tire export to England of specie for all these three 
years being but $51,807, while the average export 
from 1822 to 1830 had been about $400,000 ; and 
its amount in 1831 had been $2,089,766, and in 
1832 $1,730,571. From 1830 to 1837, both years 
inclusive, although the imports from all countries of 
general merchandise exceeded the exports by $140,- 
700,000, there was no counter movement of specie. 
The imports of specie from all countries during 
these years exceeded the exports by the compara- 
tively enormous sum of $44,700,000. The foreign- 
ers therefore took pay for their goods, not only in 
our raw materials, but also in our investments or 
rather our speculations, and sent these vast quan- 
tities of moneys besides. So our good fortune 
fired the imaginations of even the dull Europeans. 
They helped to feed and clothe us that we might 
experiment with Aladdin's lamp. 



294 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

The price of public lands was fixed by law at 
i?1.25 an acre ; and they were open to any pur- 
chaser, without the wholesome limits of acreajre 
and the restraint to actual settlers which were 
afterwards established. Here then was a commod- 
ity whose price to wholesale purchasers did not rise, 
and the very commodity by which so many fortunes 
had been made. In public lands, therefore, the 
fury of money -getting, the boastful confidence in 
the future of the country, reached their climax. 
From 1820 to 1829 the annual sales had averaged 
less than $1,300,000, in 1829 being §1,517,175. 
But in 1830 they exceeded $2,300,000, in 1831 
$3,200,000, in 1832 $2,600,000, in 1833 $3,900,- 
000, and in 1834 $4,800,000. In 1835 they sud- 
denly mounted to $14,757,600, and in 1836 to 
$24,877,179. In his messages of 1829 and 1830 
Jackson not unreasonably treated the moderate in- 
crease in the sales as a proof of increasing prosper- 
ity. In 1831 his congratulations were hushed : 
but in 1835 he again fancietl, even in the abnormal 
sales of that year, only an ampler proof of ampler 
prosperity. In 1836 he at last saw that tremendous 
speculation was the true significance of the enor- 
inous increase. Prices of course went up. Ever}^- 
body thought himself richer and his labor worth 
more. A week after Van Buren's inauguration a 
meeting was held in the City Hall Park in New 
York to pix)test against high i-ents and the high 
prices of provisions ; and with much discernment 
the cry went up, " No rag money ; give us gold 
and silver ! " 



CRISIS OF 1837 295 

There is no longer dispute that the prostra- 
tion of business in 1837, and for several years 
afterward, was the perfectly natural result of the 
speculation which had gone before. The absurd 
.denunciations of Van Buren by the most eminent 
of the Whigs for not ending the crisis by govern- 
mental interference are no longer respected. But 
it is still fancied that the speculation itself wac 
caused by one financial blunder, and the crisis im- 
mediately occasioned by another financial blunder, 
of Jackson. It is not improbable that the deposits- 
of treasury moneys in fifty state banks ^ instead of 
in the United States Bank and its twenty anc 
more branches, which began in the fall of 1833. 
aided the tendency to speculation. But this ai(i 
was at the most a slight matter. The impres 
sion has been sedulously created that these state. 
banks, the '' })et baidvs," were doubtful institutions. 
There seems little reason to doubt that in oeneral 
they were perfectly sound and reputable institu- 

^ The Treasurer's statement for Ano-iist, 18o7, g"ave eighty-four 
deposit banks. But of these, nine had less than $5000 each on 
deposit, six from $5000 to $10,000, and eight from $10,000 to 
$20,000. Fourteen had from $50,000 to $100,000 each. Only 
twenty-nine had more than $100,000 each. It is not unfair to 
speak of the dejjosits as being- substantially in fifty banks. 

The enormous land sales at the Southwest had placed a most 
disproportionate amount of money in banks in that part of the 
country. John Quiney Adams seemed, but with little reason, 
to consider this an intentional discrimination against the North. 
Ii; is quite probable that, if the deposits had been in one national 
bank, the peculiarly excessive strain at that point would have 
been modified. But this was ilo great factor in the crisis. 



296 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tions, with which the government moneys would 
be quite as safe as with the United States Bank. 
It is clear that if the latter Bank were not to be 
rechartered, the deposits should, without regard 
to the accusations of political meddling brought 
ao-ainst it, have been removed some time in advance 
of its death in March, 1836. At best it is matter 
of doubtful speculation whether the United States 
Bank under Biddle's direction would, in 1834, 
18S5, and 1836, while the government deposits 
were enormously increasing, have behaved with 
much greater prudence and foresight than did the 
state deposit banks. So far as actual experience 
helps us, the doubt might well be solved in the 
neo-ative. The United States Bank, when its fed- 
eral charter lapsed, obtained a charter from Penn- 
sylvania, continuing under the same management ; 
and is said, and possibly with truth, to have entered 
upon its new career with a great surplus. But it 
proved no stronger than the state banks in 1837 ; 
it obstructed resumption in 1838 ; it suspended 
again in 1839, while the Eastern banks stood firm ; 
and in 1841 it went to pieces in disgraceful and 
complete disaster. 

The enormous extension of bank credits during 
the three years before the break-down in 1837 
was rather the symptom than the cause of the 
disease. The fever of speculation was in the veins 
of the community before "kiting" began. Bank 
officers dwelt in the same atmosphere as did other 
Americans, and their sanguine extravagance in 



CRISIS OF 1837 297 

turn stimulated the universal temper of specula- 
tion. 

When the United States Bank lost the govern- 
ment deposits, late in 1833, they amounted to a 
little less than .$10,000,000. On January 1, 1835, 
more than a year after the state banks took the 
deposits, they had increased to a little more than 
$10,000,000. But the public debt being then paid 
and the outgo of money thus checked, the deposits 
had by January 1, 1836, reached $25,000,000, and 
by June 1, 1830, $41,500,000. This enormous ad- 
vance represented the sudden increase in the sales 
of public lands, which were paid for in bank paper, 
which in turn formed the bulk of the government 
deposits. The deposits were with only a small part 
of the six hundred and more state banks then in 
existence. But the increase in the sales of public 
lands was the result of all the organic causes and 
of all the long train of events wliich had seated 
the fever of speculation so profoundly in the Ameri- 
can character of the day. To those causes and 
events must idtimately be ascribed the extension 
of bank credits so far as it immediately arose out 
of the increase of government deposits. Nor is 
there any sufficient reason to suppose that if the 
deposits, instead of being in fifty state banks, 
had remained in the United States Bank and its 
bra,nches, the tendency to speculation would liave 
been less. The influences which surrounded that 
Bank were the very influences most compietelj' 
subject to the popular mania. 



298 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

But the increase of government deposits was only 
fuel added to the flames. The craze for banks 
and credits was unbounded before the removal of 
the deposits had taken place, and before their great 
increase could have had serious effect. Between 
1830 and January 1, 1834, the banking capital of 
the United States had risen from f 61,000,000 to 
about 1200,000,000 ; the loans and discounts of 
the banks from #200,000,000 to 1324,000,000 ; and 
their note circulation from 161,000,000 to |95,- 
000,000. The increase from January 1, 1834, to 
January 1, 1836, was even more rapid, the banking 
capital advancing in the two years to #251,000,000, 
the loans and discounts to #457,000,000, and the 
note circulation to #140,000,000. But there was 
certainty of disaster in the abnormal growth from 
1830 to 1834. The insanity of speculation was in 
ample though unobserved control of the country 
while Nicholas Biddle still controlled the deposits, 
and was certain to reach a climax whether they 
stayed with him or went elsewhere. 

It is difficult rightly to apportion among the 
statesmen and politicians of the time so much of 
blame for the mania of specuhition as must go to 
that body of men. They had all drunk in the 
national intoxication over American success and 
growth. But if we pass from the greater and 
deeper causes to the lesser though more obvious 
ones, it is impossible not to visit the greater niea- 
Bure of blame upon the statesmen who resisted 
reduction of taxation, which would have left mone^ 



CRISIS OF 1837 299 

in the pockets of those who earned it, and not 
collected it in one great bank with many branches 
or in fifty lesser banks ; upon the statesmen who 
insisted that the government ought to aid commer- 
cial ventures by encouraging the loans to traders 
of its own moneys held in the deposit banks ; upon 
the statesmen who promoted the dangerous scheme 
of distributing the surplus among the States instead 
of abolishing the surplus. As the condemnation 
of public men in the wrong must be proportioned 
somewhat to the distinction of their positions and 
the greatness of their natural gifts, this larger 
share of blame must go chiefly to Daniel Webster 
and Henry Clay. At the head of their associates, 
they had resisted the reduction of taxation. In 
his speech on the tariff bill of 1832 Clay said, 
with the exuberance so delightful to minds of 
easy discipline, that our resources should '' not be 
hoarded and hugged with a miser's embrace, but 
liberally used." They insisted upon freely lending 
the public moneys. In his speech on the distri- 
bution of the surplus, Webster urged that the 
number of the de|)osit banks " be so far increased 
that each may regard that portion of the public 
treasure which it may receive as an increase of its 
effective deposits, to be used, like other moneys in 
deposit, as a basis of discount, to a just and proper 
extent." . The public money was locked up, he 
declared, instead of aiding the general business of 
the country. Nor after this was he ashamed in 
1838 to condemn Jackson's secretary of the trea* 



300 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sury for advising the new deposit banks, as he 
bad himself thus advised them, " to afford in- 
creased facilities to commerce." If, indeed, Con- 
gress would not take steps to keep a government 
suri)lus out of the banks and in the pockets of 
producers, the secretary ought not to have been 
harshly judged for advising that the money go out 
into commerce rather than lie in bank vaults. 

The distribution of the surplus among the States 
by the law of 1836 was the last and in some re- 
spects the worst of the measures which aided and 
exaggerated the tendency to speculation. By this 
bill, all the money above 15,000,000 in the trea- 
sury on January 1, 1837, was to be "deposited" 
with the States in four quarterly installments com- 
mencing on that day. According to the law the 
" deposit " was but a loan to the States ; but, as 
Clay declared, not " a single member of either 
House imagined that a dollar would ever be re- 
called." It was in truth a mere gift. Clay's 
triumphant ridicule of the opposition to this mea- 
sure has already been mentioned. Webster in 
sounding periods declared his '' deep and earnest 
conviction" of the propriety of the stupendous 
folly. He did not, indeed, defend the general 
system of making the federal government a tax- 
gatherer for the States. But this one distribution 
would, he said in his speech of May 31, 1836, 
-' remove that severe and almost unparalleled pres- 
sure for money which is now distressing and break- 
ing down the industry, the enterjjrise, and even 



CRISIS OF 1837 301 

the courage of the commercial community." The 
Whig press declared that a congressman who could 
for mere party reasons vote against a measure 
which would bring so much money into his State, 
must be " far gone in political hardihood as well 
as depravity ; " and that " to the Republican-Whig 
party alone are the States indebted for the bene- 
fits arising from the distribution." William H. 
Seward, two years before and two years later the 
Whig candidate for governor of New York, said 
the proposal was ''noble and just." The mea- 
sure passed the Senate with six Democratic votes 
against it, among them the vote of Silas Wright, 
then probably closer than any other senator to 
Van Buren. Jackson yielded to the bill what in 
his message in December of the same year he 
called " a reluctant approval." He then gave at 
length very clear reasons for his reluctance, but 
none for his approval. He declared that " im- 
provident expenditure of money is the parent of 
profligacy," and that no intelligent and virtuous 
community would consent to raise a surplus for 
the mere purpose of dividing it. In his first mes- 
sage, indeed, Jackson had called the distribution 
among the States " the most safe, just, and federal 
disposition " of the surplus. But his views upon 
this, as upon other subjects, had changed during 
the composition of the Democratic creed which 
went on during the early years of his administra- 
tion. His second message rehearsed at length the 
objections to the distribution, though affecting to 



802 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

meet them. In his third messaoe he recommended 
the abolition of unnecessary taxation, not the dis- 
tribution of its proceeds ; and in 1832 he made his 
explicit declaration that duties should be " re- 
duced to the revenue standard." Benton says it 
was understood that in 1836 some of Van Buren's 
friends urged Jackson to approve the bill, lest a 
veto of so popular a measure might bring a Demo- 
cratic defeat. There must have been some reason 
unrelated to the merit of the measure. But what- 
ever the opinions of Van Buren's friends, he took 
care before the election to make known une- 
quivocally, in the Sherrod Williams letter already 
quoted, his dislike of this piece of demagogy. 
From the passage of the deposit bill in June, 
1836, until the crash in 1837, this superb donation 
of thirty-seven millions was before the enraptured 
and deluded vision of the country. Over nine 
millions a quarter to be poured into " improve- 
ments " or loaned to the needy, — what a delight- 
ful prospect to citizens harassed by the restraints 
of prudent, fruitful industry ! The lesson is strik- 
ing and wholesome, and ought not to be forgotten, 
that it was when the land was in the very midst of 
these largesses that the universal bankruptcy set 
in. 

Durinof 1835 and 1836 there were omens of the 
coming storm. Some perceived the rabid charac- 
ter of the speculative fever. William L. Marcy, 
governor of New York, in his message of January, 
1836, answering the dipsomaniac cry for more 



CRISIS OF 1837 303 

banks, declared that an unregulated spirit of 
speculation had taken capital out of the State ; 
hut that the amount so transferred bore no com- 
parison to the enormous speculations in stocks 
and in real property within tlie State. Lands 
near the cities and villages of the State had risen 
several hundred per cent, in value, and were sold, 
not to be occupied by the buyers, but to be sold 
again at higher prices. The passion for specula- 
tion prevailed to an extent before unknown, not 
only among capitalists, but among merchants, who 
abstracted capital from their business for land and 
stock speculations and then resorted to the banks. 
The warning was treated contemptuously ; but 
before the year was out the federal administration 
also became anxious, and the increase in land 
sales no longer signified to Jackson an increasing 
prosperity. The master hand which drew the 
economic disquisition in his message of 1836 
pointed to these sales as the effects of the exten- 
sion of bank credit and of the over-issue of bank 
paper. The banks, it was declared, had lent their 
notes as " mere instruments to transfer to specula- 
tors the most valuable public land, and pay the 
government by a credit on the books of the 
banks." Each speculation had furnished means 
for another. No sooner had one purchaser paid 
his debt in the notes than they were lent to another 
for a like purpose. The banks had extended their 
business and their issues so largely as to alarm 
considerate men. The spirit of expansion and 



304 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

speculation had not been confined to deposit 
banks, but had pervaded the whole multitude of 
banks thvoughout the Union, and had given rise 
to new institutions to aggravate the evil. So 
Jackson proceeded with his sound defense of the 
famous specie circular, long and even still de- 
nounced as the causa causans of the crisis of 
1837. 

By this circular, issued on July 11, 1836, the 
secretary of the treasury had required payment 
for public lands to be made in specie, with an ex- 
ception until December 15, 1836, in favor of actual 
settlers and actual residents of the State in which 
the lands were sold. The enormous sales of land 
in this year, and the large payments required for 
them under the circular, at once made the banks 
realize that there ought to be an actual physical 
basis for their paper transactions. Gold was 
called from the East to the banks at the West to 
make the land payments. Into the happy exalta- 
tion of unreal transactions was now plunged that 
harsh demand for real value which sooner or 
later must always come. The demand was passed 
on from one to another, and its magnitude and 
peremptoriness grew rapidly. The difference be- 
tween paper and gold became plainer and plainer. 
Nature's vital and often hidden truth that value 
depends upon labor could no longer be kept secret 
by a few wise men. The suspicion soon arose that 
there was not real and available value to meet 
the demands of nominal value. The suspicion was 



CRISIS OF 1837 305 

soon bruited among the less as well as the more 
wary. Every man rushed to his bank or his 
debtor, crying, '' Pay me in value, not in promises 
to pay ; there is, I at last see, a difference between 
them." But the banks and debtors had no availa- 
ble value, but only its paper sembUmces. Every 
man found that what he wanted, his neighbors did 
not have to give him, and what he had, his neigh- 
bors did not want. 

This is hardly an appropriate place to attempt 
an analysis of the elements of a commercial crisis. 
But it is not possible rightly to estimate Van 
Baren's moral courage and keen-sighted wisdom in 
meeting the terrible pressure of 1837 without ap- 
preciating what it was which had really happened. 
The din of the disputes over the refusal to re- 
charter the bank, over the removal of the deposits, 
over the refusal to pay the last installment of the 
distribution among the States, and over the specie 
circular, resounds even to our own time. To many 
the crisis seemed merely a financial or even a great 
banking episode. Many friends of the administra- 
tion loudly cried that the disaster arose from the 
treachery of the banks in suspending. Many of its 
enemies saw only the normal fruit of administrative 
blunders, first in recklessness, and last in heartless 
indifference. To most Americans, whatever their 
differences, the explanation of this profound and 
lastino; disturbance seemed to lie in the machinery 
of finance, rather than in the deeper facts of the 
physical wealth and power of the trading classeSr 



300 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Speculation is sometimes said to be universal-; 
and it was never nearer universality than from 
1830 to 1837. But speculation affects after all but 
a small part of the community, — the part engaged 
in trade, venture, new settlement or new nlanufac^ 
ture ; those classes of men the form of whose work 
is not established by tradition, but is changing am 
improving under the spur of ingenuity and inven- 
tion, and with whom imagination is most powerful 
and fruitful. These men use the surplus resources 
of the vastly greater number who go on through 
periods of high i)rices and of low prices with their 
steady toll and unvaried production. In our conn 
try and in all industrial conniumities it is to the 
former comparatively small class that chiefly and 
characteristically belong " good times " and '' bad 
times," panics and crises and depressions. It is 
this class which in newspapers and financial reviews 
becomes " the country." It chiefly supports the 
more influential of the clergy, the lawyers, the edi- 
tors, and others of the professional classes. It 
deals with the new uses and the accumulations of 
wealth ; it almost monopolizes pul^lic attention ; it 
is chiefly and conspicuously identified with indus- 
trial and commercial changes and progress. But if 
great depressions were as nearly universal as the 
rhetoric of economists and historians would literally 
signify, our ancestors fifty years ago must have ex- 
perienced a devastation such as Alaric is said to 
have brought to the fields of Lombardy. But this 
was not so. The processes of general production 



CRISIS OF 1837 307 

went on ; the land was tilled ; the farmer's work 
of the year brought about the same amount of coui- 
fort ; the ordinary mechanic was not much worse 
off. If some keen observer from another planet 
had in 1835 and again later in 1837 looked into 
the dining-rooms and kitchens and parlors of Amer- 
ica, had seen its citizens with their families going 
to church of a Sunday morning, or watched the tea- 
parties of their wives, or if he had looked over the 
fields and into the shops, there would have seemed to 
him but slight difference between the two years in 
the occupations, the industry, or the comfort of the 
people. But if he had stopped looking and begun 
to listen, he would in 1837 at once have perceived 
a tremendous change. The great masses of pro 
ducino' men would have been mute, as thev usually 
are. But the capitalists, the traders, the manu- 
facturers, all whose skill, courage, imagination, 
and adventure made them the leaders of progress, 
and whose voices were the only loud, clear, intel- 
ligible voices, until there arose the modern organi- 
zations of laboring men, — ■ all those who in 1835 
were flushed and glorious with a royal money-get- 
ting, — he would now have heard crying in frenzy 
and desperation. It is not meant to disparage the 
importance of this smaller but louder body of men, 
or to underrate the disaster which they suffered. 
In proportion to their numbers, they were vastly 
the most important part of the community. If they 
were prostrated, there must not only suffer the 
body of clerks, operatives, and laborers immediately 



308 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

engaged in their enterprises, and who may for eco- 
nomical purposes be ranked with them ; but later 
on, the masses of the community must to a real ex- 
tent feel the interruption of progress which has 
overtaken tliat section of the community to which 
are committed the characteristic operations of ma- 
terial progress ; and whether through the fault or 
the misfortune of that section, the injury is alike 
serious. A wise ruler, in touching the finances cf 
his country, will forget none of this. He will look 
through all the agitation of bankers and traders 
and manufacturers, the well- voiced leaders of the 
richer classes of men, to the far vaster processes of 
industry carried on by men who are silent, and 
whose silent industry will go on whatever devices 
of currency or banking may be adopted. This wis- 
dom Van Buren now showed in an exalted deo:ree. 

The disaster which in 1837 overtook so larpfe 
and so important a part of the community was, in 
its ultimate nature, not difficult to comprehend. 

There had not been one equal and universal in- 
crease in nominal values. Such an increase would 
not have produced the crisis. But while the great 
mass of the n^^tional industry went on in channels 
and with methods and rates substantially undis- 
turbed, there took place an enormous and sj^ecula- 
tive advance of prices in the cities where were 
carried on the operations of important traders and 
the promoters of enterprises, and in the very new 
country where these enterprises found their mate- 
rial. When a new canal or road was built, or a 



CRISIS OF 1837 309 

new line of river steamers launched and an unset- 
tled country made accessible, several things inevi- 
tably happened in the temper produced by the 
jubilant observation of the past. There was not 
only drawn from the ordinary industry of the coun- 
try the wealtli necessary to build the canal or road 
or steamers ; but the country thus rendered acces- 
sible seemed suddenly to gain a value measured b}' 
the best results of former settlements, howevei? 
exceptional, and by the most sanguine hopes for 
the future. The owners of the prairies and woods 
and river bottoms became suddenly rich, as a miner 
in Idaho becomes rich when he strikes a true fis- 
sure vein. The owners of the canal or road o** 
line of steamers found their real investment ai 
once multiplied in dollars by the value of the coun- 
try whose trade they were to enjoy ; for, new a?- 
that value was, it seemed assured. Like invest- 
ments were made in banks, and in every implement 
of direct or indirect use in the conduct of indus- 
tries which seemed to belong as a necessity to the 
new value of the land. The numerous sales of lands 
and of stocks in roads or canals or banks at rapidly 
advancing prices did not alter the nature, although 
they vastly augmented the effect, of what was hap- 
pening. The so-called " business classes '' through- 
out the country, related as they quickly became, 
under the great impetus of the national hopefulness 
and vanity, to the new lands, to the new cities and 
towns and farms, and to the means of reaching 
them and of providing them with the necessities 



310 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

and comforts of civilization, found their wealth 
rapidly and largely increasing. Then naturally 
enough followed the spending of money in per- 
sonal luxury. This meant the withdrawal of labor 
in the older part of the country from productive 
work, for which the country was fitted, to work 
which, whether suitable or not, was unproductive. 
The unproductive labor was paid, as the employers 
supposed, from the new value lately created at the 
West. So capital, that is, accumulated labor, was 
first spent in improvements in the new country, 
and then, and probably in a far greater amount, 
spent in more costly food, clothes, equipage, and 
other luxuries in the older country. The succes- 
sive sales at advancing prices simply increased the 
sense of new wealth, and augmented more and 
more this destructive consumption of the products 
of labor, or the destructive diversion of labor from 
productive to unproductive activity at the East by 
the well-to-do classes. 

On the eve of the panic the new wealth, whose 
seeming possession apparently justified this de- 
structive consumption or diversion to luxury of 
physical value, was primarily represented by titles 
to lands, stocks in land, canal, turnpike, railroad, 
transportation, or banking companies, and the 
notes issued by banks or traders or speculators. 
The vahie of these stocks and notes depended upon 
the fruitfulness of the lands or canals or roads or 
steamboat lines. Prices of many commodities had, 
indeed, been enhanced by speculation beyond aij 



CRISIS OF 1837 311 

proper relation to other commodities, measured by 
the ultimate standard of the quantity and quality 
of labor. But important as was this element, it 
was subordinate to the apparent creation of wealth 
at the West. 

Before the panic broke, it began to appear that 
mere surveys of wild tracts into lots made neither 
towns nor cities ; that canals and roads and steam- 
boats did not hew down trees or drain morasses or 
open the glebe. The basis of the operations of 
capitalists and promoters and venturers in new 
fields, if those operations were to have real suc- 
cess, must lie in the masses of strong and skillful 
arms of men of labor. The operations were fruit- 
less until there came a population well sinewed and 
gladly ready for arduous toil. In 1836 and 1837 
the operators found that there was no longer a 
population to give enduring- life to their new opera- 
tions. They had far outstripped all the immediate 
or even the nearly promised movements of settlers. 
Men, however hardy, preferred to work within an 
easier reach of the physical and social advantages 
of settlements already made, until they could see 
the superior fruitfulness of labor further on. The 
new cities and towns and farms and the means 
of reaching them would be mere paper assets until 
^in army of settlers was ready to enter in and make 
them sources of actual physical wealth. But the 
army stopped far short of the new Edens and me- 
tropolises. There was no creation among them of 
the actual wealth, the return of physical labor, to 



812 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

make good and real the popular semblances of 
wealth, upon the faith of which in the older part 
of the country had arisen new methods of business 
and habits of living. The withdrawal of actual 
wealth from the multifarious treasuries of capital 
and industry, to meet the expense of the improve- 
ments at the West and the increased luxury at 
the East, had reached a point where the pressure 
caused by the deficiency of physical wealth was 
too great for the hopefulness or credulity of those 
who had been surrendering that wealth upon the 
promises of successful and opulent settlements at 
the West. Nor was all this confined to ventures 
in the new States. Almost every Eastern city had 
a suburb where with slight differences all the phe- 
nomena of speculation were as real and obvious as 
in Illinois or Mississippi. 

Jackson's specie circular toppled over the house 
of cards, which at best could have stood but little 
longer. In place of bank-notes, which symbolized 
the expectations and hopes of the owners of new 
towns and improvements, the United States after 
July, 1836, required from all but actual settlers 
gold and silver for lands. An insignificant part of 
the sales had been lately made to settlers. They 
were chiefly made to speculators. The public 
lands, which sold invariably at t|1.25 an acre, were 
enormously magnified in nominal value the instant 
the speculators owned them. Paper money was 
freely issued upon these estimates of value, to be 
again paid to the government for more lands at 



CRISIS OF 1837 313 



81.25. But now gold and silver must be found ; 
and nothing but actual labor could find gold and 
silver. A further stream of true wealth was sum- 
moned from the East, already denuded, as it was, 
of all the surplus it had ready to be invested upon 
mere expectation. Enormous rates were now paid 
for real money. But of the real money necessary to 
make good the paper bubble promises of the spec- 
ulators not one-tenth part really existed. Banks 
could neither make their debtors pay in gold and 
silver, nor pay their own notes in gold and silver. 
So they suspended. 

The o-reat and lon^: concealed devastation of 
physical wealth and of the accumulation of legiti- 
mate labor, by premature improvements and costly 
personal living, became now quickly apparento 
Fancied wealth sank out of sight. Paper symbols 
of new cities and towns, canals and roads, were 
not only without value, but they were now plainly 
seen to be so. Rich men became poor men. The 
prices of articles in which there had been specu- 
lation sank in the reaction far below their true 
value. The industrious and the prudent, who had 
given their labor and their real wealth for paper 
promises issued upon the credit of seemingly as= 
sured fortunes, suffered at once with men whose 
fortunes had never been anything better than the 
delusions of their hope and imagination. 

It is now plain enough that to recover from this 
crisis was a work of physical reparation to which 
must go time, industry, and frugality. There was 



314 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

folly in every effort to retain and use as valuable 
assets the invest'uents in companies and bank^ 
whose usefulness, if it had ever begun, was now 
ended. There was folly in every eifort to conceal 
from the world by words of hopefulness the fact 
that the imagined values in new cities and garden 
lands had disappeared in a rude disenchantment 
as complete as that of Abou-Ilassan in the Thou- 
sand and One Nights, or that of Sly, the tinker, 
left untold in the Taming of the Shrew. Their 
sites were no more than wild lands, whose value 
pust wait the march of American progress, fast 
enouoh indeed to the rest of the world, but slow as 
the snail to the wild pacing of the speculators. 
Every pretense of a politician, whether in or out 
of the senate chamber, that the government could 
by devices of financiering avoid this necessity of 
lono* physical repair, was either folly or wickedness. 
And of this folly or even wickedness there was no 
lack in the anxious spring and summer of 1837. 

There had already occurred in many quarters 
that misery which is borne by the humbler pro- 
ducers of wealth not for their own consumption, 
but simply for exchange, whose earnings are not 
increased to meet the inflation of prices upon which 
traders and speculators are accumulating apparent 
fortunes and spending them as if they were real 
On February 14, 1837, several thousand people 
met in front of the City Hall in New York under 
a call of men whom the '' Commercial Advertiser " 
described as "Jackson Jacobins." The call was 



CRISIS OF 1837 315 

headed: "Bread, meat, rent, fuell Their prices 
must come down ! " It invited the pt^^sence of " all 
friends of humanity determined to resist monopo- 
lists and extortionists." A very respectable meet- 
ing about high prices had been held two or three 
weeks before at the Broadway Tabernacle. Tlie 
meeting in the City Hall Park, with a mixture of 
wisdom and folly, urged the prohibition of bank- 
notes under |100, and called for gold and silver; 
and then denounced landlords and dealers in pro- 
visions. The excitement of the meeting was fol- 
lowed by a riot, in which a great flour warehouse 
was gutted. The rioters were chiefly foreigners 
and few in number ; nor were the promoters of the 
meeting involved in the riot. The military were 
called out ; and Eli Hart & Co., the unfortunate 
flour merchants, issued a card pointing out with 
grim truth '* that the destruction of the article can- 
not have a tendency to reduce the price." 

The distribution of the treasury surplus to the 
States precipitated the crash. The first quarter's 
payment of ^9,367,000 was made on January 1, 
1837. There was disturbance in taking this large 
sum of money from the deposit banks. Loans had 
to be called in, and the accommodation to business 
men lessened for the time. There was speculative 
disturbance in the receipt of the moneys by the 
state depositories. There was apprehension for 
the next payment on April 1, which was accom- 
plished with still greater disturbance, and after 
the crisis had begun. The calls for gold and silver, 



316 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

begun under the specie circular, and the disturb^ 
ances caused by these distributions, were increased 
by financial pressure in England, whose money 
aids to America were but partly shown by the 
shipments of gold and silver already mentioned. 
Th3 extravagance of living had been shown in for- 
eign importations for consumption in luxury, to 
Uieet which there had gone varied promises to pay, 
and securities whose true value depended upon the 
true and not the apparent creation of wealth in 
America. Before the middle of March the money 
excitement at Manchester was great ; and to the 
United States alone, it was then declared, attention 
was directed for larger remittances and for specie. 
The merchants of Liverpool about the same time 
sent a memorial to the chancellor of the exchequer 
saying " that the distress of the mercantile interest 
is intense beyond example, and that it is rapidly 
extendins: to all ranks and conditions of the com- 
munity, so as to threaten irretrievable ruin in all 
directions, involving the prudent with the impru- 
dent." The " London Times" on April 10, 1837, 
said that great distress and pressure had been pro- 
duced in every branch of national industry, and 
that the calamity had never been exceeded. 

The cry was quickly reechoed from America. 
Commercial failures began in New York about 
April 1. By April 8 nearly one hundred failures 
had occurred in that city, — five of foreign and ex- 
change brokers, thirty of dry-goods jobbers, sixteen 
of conuiiission houses, twenty-eight of real-estate 



CRISIS OF 1837 317 

speculators, eiglit of stock brokers, and several 
others. Three days later the failures had reached 
one hundred and twenty-eight. Provisions, wages, 
rents, everything, as the " New York Herald "^ on 
that day announced, were coming down. Withui a 
few days more the failures were too numerous to hv- 
specially noticed ; and before the end of the month 
the rest of the country was in a like condition. 
The prostration in the newer cotton States was 
peculiarly complete. Their staple was now down 
to ten cents a pound ; within a year it had been 
worth twenty. All other staples fell enormously 

in price. 

Later in April the merchants of New York met. 
Instead of condemning their own folly, they re- 
solved, in a silly fury, that the disaster was due to 
government interference with the business and com- 
mercial operations of the country by requiring land 
to be paid for in specie instead of paper, to its 
destruction of the Bank, and to its substitution 
of a metallic for a credit currency. A commit- 
tee of fifty, including Thomas Denny, Henry Par- 
ish, Elisha Riggs, and many others whose names 
are still honored in New York, was appointed to 
remonstrate with the president. - What consti- 
tutional or legal justification," it was seriously de- 
manded, ^^can Martin Van Buren offer to the peo- 
ple of the United States for having brought upon 
them all their present difficulties?" The contim 
uance of the specie circular, they said, was more 
Uigh-handed tyranny than that which had cost 



318 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Charles I. his crown and his head. On May 3 
the committee visited Washington and told the 
President that their real estate had depreciated 
forty millions, their stocks twenty millions, their 
immense amoimts of merchandise in warehouses 
thirty per cent. They piteously said to him, '' The 
noble city which we represent lies prostrate in de- 
spair, its credit blighted, its industry paralyzed, Jind 
without a hope beaming through the darkness, un- 
less " — and here we might sui3pose they would 
have added, " unless Americans at once stop spend- 
ing money which has not been earned, and repair 
the ruin by years of sensible industry and strict 
economy." But the conclusion of the merchants 
was that the darkness must continue unless relief 
came from Washington. It was unjust, they said, 
to attribute the evils to excessive development of 
mercantile enterprise ; they flowed instead from 
" that unwise system which aimed at the substitu- 
tion of a metallic for a paper currency." The 
error of their rulers " had produced a wider deso- 
lation than the pestilence which depopulated our 
streets, or the conflagration which laid them in 
ashes." In the opinion of these sapient gentlemen 
of business, it was the requirement that the United 
States, in selling Western lands to speculators, 
should be paid in real and not in nominal money, 
which had prostrated in despair the metropolis of 
the country. They asked for a withdrawal of the 
specie circular, for a suspension of government suits 
against importers on bonds given for duties, for 



CRISIS OF 1837 519 

an extra session of Congress to pass Clay's bill 
for the distribution of the land revenue among 
the States, and for the re-chartering of the Bank. 
Never did men out of their heads with fright pro- 
pose more foolish attempts at relief than some of 
these. But the folly, as will be seen, seized states- 
men of the widest experience as well as frenzied 
merchants. The President's answer was dignified, 
but " brief and explicit." To the insolent sugges- 
tion that Jackson's financial measures had been 
more destructive than fire or pestilence, he caluily 
reminded them that he had made fully known, 
before he was elected, his own approval of those 
measures ; that knowing this the people had deli- 
berately chosen him ; and that he would still adhere 
to those measures. The specie circular should be 
neither repealed nor modified. Such indulgence 
in enforcing custom-house bonds would be allowed 
as the law permitted. The emergency did not, he 
thought, justify an extra session. Nicholas Biddle 
called on Van Buren ; and many were disgusted- 
that in the presence of this arch enemy the presi- 
dent remained " profoundly silent upon the greats 
and interesting topics of the day." 

Van Buren's resolution to face the storm with- 
out either the aid or the embarrassment of the 
early presence of Congress he was soon compelled 
to abandon. AVithin a few days of the return of 
the merchants to New York, that city sent the Pre- 
sident an appalling reply. On May 10 its banks 
suspended payment of their notes in coin. A few 



520 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

flays before some banks in lesser cities of the 
Southwest had stopped. On the day after the 
New York suspension, the banks of Phihvdelphia, 
Baltimore, Albany, Hartford, New Haven, and 
Providence followed. On the 12th the banks of 
Boston and Mobile, on the 13th those of New 
Orleans, and on the 17th those of Charleston and 
Cincinnati fell in the same crash. There was 
now simply a general bankruptcy. Men would 
no longer meet their promises to pay, because no 
longer could new paper promises pay off old ones. 
No longer would men surrender physical wealth 
safely in their hands for the expectation of wealth 
to be created by the future progress of the coun- 
try. But men with perfectly real physical wealth 
in their storehouses, which they could not them- 
selves use, were also in practical bankruptcy be- 
cause of their commercial debts most prudently 
incurred. The natural exchange of their own 
goods for goods which they or their creditors 
might use was obstructed by the utter discredit of 
paper money, and by the almost complete disap- 
pearance of gold and silver. Extra sessions of 
state legislatures were called to devise relief. 
The banks' suspension of specie payment in New 
York was within a few days legalized by the legis- 
lature of that State. On May 12 the secretary of 
the treasury directed government collectors them- 
selves to keep public moneys where the deposit 
banks had suspended. 

For banks holding the public moneys sank with 



CRISIS OF 1837 321 

the others. And it was this which compelled Van 
Bureu in one matter to yield to the storm. On 
May 15 he issued a proclamation for an extra ses- 
sion of Congress to meet on the first Monday of 
September. It would meet, the proclamation said, 
to consider ''great and weighty matters." No 
scheme of relief was suggested. The locking up 
of public moneys in suspended banks made neces= 
sary some relief to the government itself. It was, 
perhaps, well enough that excited and terrified 
people, casting about for a remedy, should, until 
their wits were somewhat restored, be soothed by 
assurance that the great council of the nation 
would, at any rate, discuss the situation. More- 
over, it was wise to secure time, that most potent 
ally of the statesman. Within the three months 
and a half to elapse, Van Buren, like a wise ruler, 
thouo-ht the true nature of the calamity would be- 
come more apparent ; proposals of remedies might 
be scrutinized ; and thoughtless or superficial men 
mio-ht weary of their own absurd proposals, or 
the people might fully perceive their absurdity. 

During the summer popular excitement ran 
very high against the administration. The Whig 
papers declared it to be " the melancholy truth, 
the awful truth," that the administration did 
nothing to relieve, but everything to distress the 
commercial community. Abbot Lawrence, one of 
the richest and most influential citizens of Boston, 
told a great meeting, on May 17, that there was 
no other people on the face of God's earth that 



322 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

were so abused, cheated, plundered, and trampled 
on by their rulers ; that the government exacted 
impossibilities. No overt act, he said, with almost 
a sinister suggestion, ought to be committed until 
the laws of self-preservation compelled a forcible 
resistance ; but the time might come when the 
crew must seize the ship. The friends of the ad- 
ministration sought, indeed, to stem the tide ; and 
a series of skillfully devised popular gatherings 
was held, very probably inspired by Van Buren, 
who highly estimated such organized appeals to 
popular sentiment. In Philadelphia a great meet- 
ing denounced the bank suspensions and the issue 
of small notes as devices in the interest of a foreign 
conspiracy to throw silver coin out of circulation 
and export it to Europe, to raise the prices of 
necessaries, and recommence a course of gambling 
under the name of speculation and trade, in which 
the people must be the victims, and " the foreign 
and home desperadoes " the gainers. The meeting 
declared for a metallic currency. " We hereby 
pledge our lives, if necessary," they said, " for the 
support of the same." Later, on May 22, there 
was in the same city a large gathering at Inde- 
pendence Square, which solemnly called upon the 
administration " manfully, fearlessly, and at all 
hazards to go on collecting the public revenues 
and paying the public dues in gold and silver." 
Their forefathers, who fought for their liberties, 
the framers of our Constitution, the patriarchs 
whose memory they revered, were, with a funny 



CRISIS OF 1837 323 

mixture of truth and falsehood, declared to have 
been hard-money men. A week later, a great 
meeting in Baltimore approved the specie circular, 
and urged its fearless execution, " notwithstanding 
the senseless clamors of the British party ; " for 
the crisis, they said, was " a struggle of the vir- 
tuous and industrious portions of the community 
against bank advocates and the enemies to good 
morals and republicanism." Protests were else- 
where made a2:ainst forcino^ small notes into circu- 
lation. Paper had, however, to be used, for there 
was nothing else. Barter must go on, even upon 
the most fliuisy tokens. In New York one saw, 
as were seen twenty-four years later, bits of paper 
like this : ^' The bearer will be entitled to fifty 
cents' value in refreslunents at tlie Auction Hotel, 
123 and 125 Water Street. New York, May, 
1837. Charles Redabock." In Tallahassee a 
committee of citizens was appointed to print bank 
tickets for purposes of change. In Easton the 
currency had a more specific basis. One of the 
tokens read : " This ticket will hold good for a 
sheep's tongue, two crackers, and a glass of red- 
eye." 

When Congress assembled, the country had cried 
itself, if not to sleep, at least to seeming quiet. 
The sun had not ceased to rise and set. Although 
merchants and bankers were prostrate with anxiety 
or even in irremediable ruin ; although thousands 
of clerks and laborers were out of employment or 
earning absurdly low wages, — for near New York 



321 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

hiuulreds of laborers were rejected who applied for 
work at four dollars a month and board ; although 
honest frontiersmen found themselves hopelessly 
isolated in a wilderness, — for the frontier had 
suddenly shrunk far behind them, — still the har- 
vest had been good, the masses of men had been 
at work, and economy had prevailed. The despera- 
tion was over. But there was a profound melan- 
choly, from wliich a recovery was to come only toe 
soon to be lasting. 



CHAPTER IX 

PRESIDENT. — SUB-TREASURY BILL 

Van Buren's bearing in the crisis was admira^ 
ble. Even those who have treated him with ani= 
mosity or contempt do not here refuse him high 
praise. '' In this one question," says Von Hoist, 
''he really evinced courage, firmness, and states- 
manlike insight. . . . Van Buren bore the storm 
bravely. He repelled all reproaches with decision, 
but with no 'bitterness. . . . Van Buren unques- 
tionably merited well of the country, because he re- 
fused his cooperation, in accordance with the guar- 
dianship principle of the old absolutisms, to ac- 
custom the people of the Republic also to see the 
government enter as a saving chus ex machina in 
every calamity brought about by their own fault 
and folly. . . . Van Buren had won a brilliant 
victory and placed his countrymen under lasting 
oblioations to him." ^ 

o 

1 I cannot refrain from noticing- here the curious fact that Dr. 
Von Hoist, after a contemptuous picture of Van Buren as a mere 
verbose, coarse-grained politician given to scheming- and duplicity, 
was not surprised at his meeting in so lofty a spirit this really great 
trial. For surely here, if anywhere, the essential fibre of the man 
would be discovered. I must also express my regret that this 
writer, to whom Americans owe very much, should have been 



326 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Van Biiren met the extra session with a message 
which marks the zenith of his political wisdom. It 
is one of the greatest of American state papers. 
With clear, unflinching, and unanswerable logic he 
faced the crisis. There was no effort to evade the 
questions put to him, or to divert public attention 
from the true issue. The government could not, 
he showed, help people earn their living; but it 
could refuse to aid the deception that paper was 
gold, and the delusion that value could arise with- 
out labor. The masterly argument vseems long to a 
sauntering reader ; but it treated a difficult ques- 
tion which had to be answered by the multitudes 
of a democracy many of whom were pinched and 
excited by personal distresses and anxiety and who 
were sure to read it. Few episodes in our political 
history give one more exalted appreciation of the 

content (althoug-t in tbis he has but joined some otber historians of 
American politics) to accept mere campaign or partisan rumors 
which when directed against other men, have gone unnoticed, but 
against Van Buren have become the basis for emphatic disparage- 
ment and contumely. Even Mackenzie, the publisher of the pur- 
loined letters, writing his pamphlet with the most obvious and 
reckless venom, is quoted by this learned historian as respectable 
authority. Van Buren had refused during nearly a year to pardon 
Mackenzie from prison for his imla^vful use of American territory 
to prepare armed raids on Canada. Sir Francis B. Head's opinion 
was doubtless somewhat colored ; but he was not entirely without 
justification in applying to Mackenzie the words: " He lies out of 
every pore in his skin. Whether he be sleeping or waking, on foot 
or on horseback, together with his neighbors or writing for a news- 
paper, a multitudinous swarm of lies, visible, palpable, and tan- 
gible, are buzzing and settling about him like flies around a horse 
in August." (Narrative of fcir F. B. Heatd, London, 1839.) . 



EXTRA SESSION 327 

good sense of the American masses, than that, in 
this stress of national suffering, a skillful politician 
should have appealed to them, not even sweetening 
the truth, but resisting with direct and painful so- 
briety their angry and natural impulses ; this, too, 
when most of the talented and popular leaders were 
promoting, rather than reducing or diverting the 
heated folly of the time. 

Van Buren quietly began by saying that the law 
required the secretary of the treasury to deposit 
public moneys only in banks that paid their notes 
in specie. All the banks had stopped such pay' 
ment. It was obvious therefore that some other 
custody of public moneys must be provided, and it 
was for this that he had summoned Congress. He 
then began what was really an address to the peo- 
ple. He pointed out that the government had not 
caused, and that it could not cure, the profound 
commercial distemper. Antecedent causes had 
been stimulated bv the enormous inflations of bank 
currency and other credits, and among them tne 
many millions of foreign loans, and the lavish ac- 
commodations extended '• by foreign dealers to our 
merchants." Thence had come, the spirit of reckless 
speculation, and from that a foreign debt of more 
than thirty millions ; the extension to traders in 
the interior of credits for supplies greatly beyond 
the wants of the people ; the investment of thirty- 
nine and a half millions in unproductive public 
lands ; the creation of debts to an almost countless 
amount for real estate in existing or anticipated 



328 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

cities and villages; the expenditure of immense 
sums in improvements ruinously improvident ; the 
diversion to other pursuits of labor that should 
have gone to agriculture, so that this first of agri- 
cultural countries had imported two millions of 
dollars worth of grain in the first six months of 
1837 ; and the rapid gTowth of luxurious habits 
founded too often on merely fancied wealth. These 
evils had been ag'gravated by the great loss of 
capital in the famous fire at New York in Decem- 
ber, 1835, a loss whose effects, though real, were 
not at once apparent because of the shifting and 
postponement of the burdens through facilities of 
credit, by the disturbance which the transfers of 
public moneys in the distribution among the States 
caused, and by necessities of foreign creditors which 
made them seek to withdraw specie from the United 
States. He pointed out the unprecedented expan- 
sion of credit in Great Britain at the same time, 
and, with the redundancy of paper currency ^ there, 
the rise of adventurous and unwholesome specula- 
tion. 

To the demand for a reestablishment of a na- 
tional bank, he replied that quite a contrary thing 
must be done ; that the fiscal concerns of the gov^ 
ernment must be separated from those of indivi- 
duals or corporations ; that to create such a bank 
would be to disregard the popular will twice 
solenmly and unequivocally expressed ; that the 

^ Tho reference was to commercial paper and not to bank-notes. 
But both IukI been active characteristics of American speculatioa 



EXTRA SESSION 329 

same motives would operate on the administrators 
of a national as on those of state banks ; that the 
Bank of the United States had not prevented for- 
mer and similar embarrassments, and that the 
Bank of England had but lately failed in its own 
land to prevent serious abuses of credit. He knew 
indeed of loud and serious complaint because the 
government did not now aid commercial exchange. 
But this was no part of its duty. It was not the 
province of government to aid individuals in the 
transfer of their funds otherwise than through 
the facilities of the post-office. As justly might 
the government be asked to transport merchandise. 
These were operations of trade to be conducted by 
those who were interested in them. Throughout 
Europe domestic as well as foreign exchanges were 
carried on by private houses, and often, if not 
generally, without the assistance of banks. Our 
own exchanges ought to be carried on by private 
enterprise and competition, without legislative as- 
sistance, free from the influence of political agita- 
tion, and from the neglect, partiality, injustice, and 
oppression unavoidably attending the interference 
of government with the proper concerns of indi- 
viduals. His own views, Van Buren declared, were 
unchanged. Before his election he had distinctly 
apprised the people that he would not aid in the 
reestablishment of a national bank. His convic- 
tion had been strengthened that such a bank meant 
a concentrated money power hostile to the spirit 
and permanency of our republican institutions. 



330 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

He then turned to those state banks which had 
held government deposits. At all times they had 
held some of the federal moneys, and since 1833 
they had held the whole. Since that year the 
utmost security had been required from them for 
such moneys ; but when lately called upon to pay 
the surplus to the States, they had, while curtailing 
their discounts and increasing the general distress, 
been with the other banks fatally involved in the 
revulsion. Under these circumstances it was a 
solemn duty to inquire whether the evils inherent 
in any connection between the government and 
banks of issue were not such as to require a di- 
vorce. Ought the moneys taken from the people 
for public uses longer to be deposited in banks 
and thence to be loaned for the profit of private 
persons ? Ought not the collection, safe-keeping, 
transfer, and disbursement of public moneys to 
be managed by public officers? The public rev- 
enues must be limited to public expenses so that 
there should be no great surplus. The care of the 
moneys inevitably accumulated from time to time 
would involve expense ; but this was a trifling con- 
sideration in so important a matter. Personally it 
would be agreeable to him to be free from concern 
in the custody and disbursement of the public rev- 
enue. Not indeed that he would shrink from a 
proper official responsibility, but because he firmly 
believed the capacity of the executive for useful- 
ness was in no degree promoted by the possession 
of patronage not actually necessary. But he was 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 331 

clear that the connection of the executive with 
powerful moneyed institutions, capable of minis- 
tering to the interests of men in points where they 
were most accessible to corruption, was more liable 
to abuse than his constitutional agency in the ap- 
pointment and control of the few public officers 
required by the proposed plan. 

Thus was announced the independent treasury 
scheme, the divorce of bank and state, the famous 
achievement of Van Buren's presidency. He 
argued besides elaborately in favor of the specie 
circular. An individual could, if he pleased, ac- 
cept payment in a paper promise or in any other 
way as he saw fit. But a public servant should in 
exchange for public domain take only what was 
universally deemed valuable. He ought not to 
have a discretion to measure the value of mere 
promises. The f 9,367,200 in the treasury for de- 
posit with the States in October, or rather for a 
permanent distribution to them, he desired to re- 
tain for federal necessities. This would doubtless 
inconvenience States which had relied on the fed- 
eral donation ; but as the United States needed 
the money to meet its own obligations, there was 
neither justice nor expediency in generously giving 
it away. Van Buren here left the defensive with 
a menace to the banks that a bankruptcy law for 
corporations suspending specie payment might 
impose a salutary check on the issues of paper 
money. 

The President finally spoke in words which seem 



332 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

golden to all who share his view of the ends of gov- 
ernment. " Those w^ho look to the action of this 
government," he said, *' for specific aid to the citi- 
zen to relieve embarrassments arising from losses 
by revulsions in commerce and credit, lose sight of 
the ends for which it was created, and the powers 
with which it is clothed. It was established to 
give security to us all, in our lawful and honorable 
pursuits, under the lasting safeguard of republican 
institutions. It was not intended to confer special 
favors on individuals, or on any classes of them ; 
to create systems of agriculture, manufactures, or 
trade ; or to engage in them, either separately or 
in connection with individual citizens or organi- 
zations. . . . All communities are apt to look to 
government for too much . . . We are prone to do 
so especially at periods of sudden embarrassment 
and distress. . . . The less government interferes 
v^ith private pursuits, the better for the general 
prosperity. It is not its legitimate object to make 
men rich, or to repair by direct grants of money 
or legislation in favor of particular puisuits, losses 
not incurred in the public service." To avoid un- 
necessary interference with such pursuits would be 
far more beneficial than efforts to assist limited 
interests, efforts eagerly, but perhaps naturally, 
sought for under temporary pressure. Congress 
and himself. Van Buren closed by saying, acted 
for a people to whom the truth, however unprom- 
ising, could always be spoken with safety, and 
who, in the phrase of which he was fond, were sure 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 333 

never to desert a public functionary honestly labor- 
ing for the public good. 

An angry and almost terrible outburst received 
this plain, honest, and wise declaration that the 
people must repair their own disasters without pa- 
ternal help of government ; and that, rather than to 
promote the extension of credit with public moneys, 
the crisis ought to afford means of departing for- 
ever from that policy. Most of the able men who 
to this generation have seemed the larger states- 
men of the day, joined with passionate declamation 
in the furious gust of folly. It was a favorite 
delusion that government was a separate entity 
which could help the people, and not a mere agency, 
simply using wealth and power which the people 
must themselves create. Webster, in a speech at 
Madison, Indiana, on June 1, 1837, professed his 
conscientious convictions that all the disasters had 
proceeded from " the measures of the general gov- 
ernment in relation to the currency." He ridiculed 
the idea that the people had helped cause them. 
The people, he thought, had no lesson to learn. 
" Over-trading, over-buying, over-selling, over-spe- 
culation, over-production," — these, he said, were 
terms he " could not very well understand." In 
his speech of December, 1836, on the specie circu- 
lar, he had given a leonine laugh at the idea of 
there being inflation. If he were asked, he said, 
what kept up the value of money " in this vast and 
sudden expansion and increase of it," he should 
answer that it was kept up " by an equally vast 



334 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

and sudden increase in the property of the conn- 
try." That this amazing vitterance upon the dyna- 
mics of national economy might be clear, he added 
that the vast and sudden increase was " in the 
value of that property intrinsic as well as market- 
able." No speculator of the day said a more foolish 
thing than did this towering statesman. There 
were, he admitted, '' other minor causes," but they 
were "not worth enumerating." "The great and 
immediate orisrin of the evil " was " disturbances 
in the exchange . . . caused by the agency of the 
ofovernment itself." At the extra session Webster 
described the shock caused him by the President's 
"disregard for the public distress," by his "exclu- 
sive concern for the interest of government and 
revenue, by his refusal to prescribe for the sickness 
and disease of society," by the separation he would 
draw " between the interests of the government 
and the interests of the people." For his part he 
would be warm and generous in his statesmanship. 
He resisted the bill to suspend the " deposit " with 
the States ; he would in the coming October pay 
out the last installment, stricken though the trea- 
sury was. He would again sweeten the popular 
palate with government manna, bitter as it had 
proved itself to the belly. It was the duty of the 
government, he said, to aid in exchanges by estab- 
lishing a paper currency ; he and those with him 
preferred the long-tried, well-approved practice of 
the government to letting Benton, as he said, " em- 
brace us in his gold and silver arms and hug us to 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 335 

his hard money breast." As if this were not a 
time for soberness over its shameful abuses, credit, 
and the banks and bank-notes which aided it were 
almost apotheosized. At St. Louis in the summer, 
Webster, in a speech which he did not include 
in his collected works, said that help must come 
" from the government of the United States, from 
thence alone ; " adding, " Upon this I risk my poli- 
tical reputation, my honor, my all. . . . He who 
expects to live to see all these twentj^-six States 
resuming specie payments in regular succession 
once more, may expect to see the restoration of 
the Jews. Never ! He will die without the sight." 
John Quincy Adams had told his friends at 
home that the distribution of the public moneys 
among the state banks was the most pernicious 
cause of the disaster, although, differing from 
Webster, he admitted that " the abuse of credit, 
especially by the agency of banks," and the unre- 
strained pursuit of individual wealth, were the 
proximate causes of the disaster, for history had 
testified 

" Peace to corrupt, no less than war to waste." 

He would punish suspension of specie payments 
by a bank with a forfeiture of its charter and 
the imprisonment of its president and officers. 
A national bank, he said, was " the only prac- 
ticable expedient for restoring and maintaining 
specie payments." In the extra session he showed 
that the deposit banks of the South already held 



336 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

more money of the government than their States 
wouid receive, if the last installment of distribution 
should be paid, while the Northern banks held far 
less of that money than the Northern States were to 
receive. He denounced as a Southern measure the 
proposition to }X)stpone this piece of recklessness. 
Should the Northern States hail with shouts of 
Hosanna " this evanescence of their funds from 
their treasuries," or be " humbugged out of their 
vested rights by a howl of frenzy against Nicholas 
Bid die," or be mystified out of their money and 
out of their senses by a Hark follow ! against all 
banks, or by a summons to Doctors' Commons for 
a divorce of bank and state ? 

That skillful political weathercock, Caleb Cush- 
ing, told his constituents at Lowell that private 
banking was the '* shinplaster system;" and asked 
whether we wished to have men who, like the 
Rothschilds, make " peace or war as they choose, 
and wield at will the destiny of empires." The 
plan of the administration was like that of "a 
cowardly master of a sinking ship, to take posses- 
sion of the long boat and provisions, cut off, and 
leave the ship's company and passengers to their 
fate." To the plausible cry of separating bank 
and state he would answer, " Why not separate 
court and state ... or law and state ... or cus- 
tom-house and state." It was " the new nostrum 
of political quackery." Clay delivered a famous 
speech in the Senate on September 25, 1837. He 
was appalled at the heartlessness of the administra- 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 337 

tion. " The people, the States, and their banks,'' 
he said in the favorite cant of the time, " are left 
to shift for themselves," as if that were not the 
very thing- for them to do. We were all, he said, 
— "people. States, U)iion, banks, ... all entitled 
to the protecting care of a parental government." 
He cried out against '' a selfish solicitude for the 
government itself, but a cohl and heartless insensi- 
bility to the sufferings of a bleeding people." The 
substitution of an exclusive metallic currency was 
"forbidden by the principles of eternal justice." 
For his part he saw no adequate remedy which did 
" not comprehend a national bank as an essential 
part of it." In banking corporations, indeed, 
"the interests of the rich and poor are happily 
blended ; " nor should we encourage here private 
bankers, Hopes and Barings and Rothschilds and 
Hottinguers, " whose vast overgrown caj^itals, pos- 
sessed by the rich exclusively of the poor, control 
the destiny of nations." 

The bill for the independent treasury was firmly 
pressed by the administration. It did not deceive 
the people with any pretense that banks and paper 
money would stand in lieu of industry, economy, 
and good sense. The summer elections, then far 
more numerous than now, had, as Clay warningly 
pointed out, gone heavily against Van Buren. The 
bill passed the Senate, 26 to 20. In the House it 
was defeated. Upon the election of speaker, the 
administration candidate, James K. Polk, had had 
116 votes to 103 for John Bell. But this very 



338 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

moderate majority was insecure. A break in the 
administration ranks was promjitly shown by the 
defeat, for printers to the House, of Francis P. 
Blair and his partner, who in their paper, the 
" Washington Globe," had firmly supported the 
hard money and anti-bank policy. They received 
only 107 votes, about fifteen Democrats uniting 
with the Whigs to defeat them. Van Buren was 
unable to educate all his party to his own firm, 
clear-sighted views. There was formed a small 
party of " conservatives," Democrats who took 
what seemed, and what for the time was, the popu- 
lar course. The independent treasury bill was 
defeated in the House by 120 to 106. 

Van Buren's proposal was carried, however, to 
postpone the '' deposite," as it was called, the gift 
as it was, of the fourth installment of the surplus. 
On October 1, Webster and Clay led the seven- 
teen senators who insisted upon the folly of the 
national treasury in its destitution playing the 
magnificent donor, and further debauching the 
States with streams of pretended wealth. Twenty- 
eio-ht senators voted for the bill ; and in the House 
it was carried by 118 to 105, John Quincy Adams 
heading the negative vote. 

The administration further proposed the issue 
of f 10,000,000 in treasury notes. It was a mea- 
sure strictly of temporary relief. Gold and silver 
had disappeared; bank-notes were discredited. 
The government, whose gold and silver the banks 
would not pay out, was disabled from meeting its 



EXTRA SESSION 339 

ciuTent obligations ; and the treasury notes were 
proposed to meet the necessity. They were not to 
be legal tender, but interest-bearing obligations in 
denominations not less than f50, to be merely re- 
ceivable for all public dues, and thus to gain a 
credit which would secure their circulation. This 
natural and moderate measure was assailed by 
those who were lauding a paper currency to the 
skies. The radical difference was ignored between 
a general currency of small as well as large bills, 
without intrinsic value, adopted for all time, and 
a limited and perfectly secure government loan, ta 
be freely taken or rejected by the people, in bills 
of laroe amounts, to meet a serious but brief em- 
barrassment. '' Who expected," said Webster in 
the Senate, " that in the fifth year of the experi- 
ment for reforming the currency, and bringing 
it to an absolute gold and silver circulation, the 
Treasury Department would be found recommend- 
ing to us a regular emission of paper money ? " 
He voted, however, for the bill, the only negative 
votes in the Senate being given by Clay and four 
others. In the House it was carried by 127 to 98. 
Such was the substantial work of the extra ses- 
sion. To the experience of that crisis and the 
wisdom with which it was met may not impro- 
bably be ascribed the hard-money leaven which, 
thirty or forty years later, prevented the great 
disaster of further paper inflation, and brought 
the country to a currency which, if not the best, is 
a currency of coin and of redeemable paper, whose 



840 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

value, apart from the legal-tender notes left us by 
the war and the decision of the Supreme Court, 
depends upon the best of securities, coin or gov- 
ernment bonds, deposited in the treasury, and a 
currency whose amount may therefore safely be 
left to the natural operations of trade. 

Clay's appeal for a great banking institution, 
which should accomplish by magic the results of 
popular labor and saving, was met by a vote of 
the House, 123 to 91, that it was inexpedient to 
charter a national bank, many voting against a 
bank who had already voted against an independ- 
ent treasury. The Senate also resolved against 
a national bank by 31 to 14, six senators who had 
voted against an independent treasury voting also 
against a bank. The temporary expedient adopted 
by the treasury on the suspension of the banks was 
therefore continued, and public moneys were kept 
in the hands of public officers. 

Calhoun now rejoined the Democratic party. 
Xt was onl}^ the year before he had denounced it 
as " a powerful faction held together by the hopes 
of public plunder ; " and early in this very year 
he had referred to the removal of the deposits as 
an act fit for " the days of Pompey or Caesar," and 
had declared that even a Roman Senate would not 
have passed the expunging resohition " until the 
times of Caligula and Nero." But Van Buren, 
Calhoun now said, had been driven to his position ; 
nor woukl he leave the position for that reason. 
He referred to the strict construction of the powers 



EXTRA SESSION 341 

of the government involved in the divorce of bank 
and state. There was no suggestion that Van 
Buren had become a. convert to nullification. But 
Calhoun could with consistency support Van 
Buren. The independent treasury scheme was 
plainly far different from the removal of the de^ 
posits from one great bank to many lesser ones. 
The reasons for political exasperation had besides 
disappeared. Van Buren was chief among the 
heati possidentes, and could not for yeai^ be dis- 
turbed. His tact and skill left open no personal 
feud ; he had not yet conferred the title of Cjesar ; 
no successor to himself was yet named by any 
clear designation. Calhoun joined Silas Wright 
and the other administration senators ; but he still 
maintained a grim and inde23enideiit front. 

The extra session ended on October 16. Be- 
sides the issuance of $10,000,000 in treasury notes 
and the postponement of the distribution among 
the States, the only measure adopted for relief 
was a law permitting indulgence of payment to 
importers upon custom-house bonds. As those 
payments were to be made in specie, and as specie 
had left circulation, it was proper that the United 
States as a creditor should exhibit the same leni- 
ency which was wise and necessary on the part of 
other creditors. 

Commercial distress had now materially abated, 
although many of its wounds were still deep and 
unhealed. Before the regular session began in 
December, substantial progress was made towards 



342 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

specie payments. The price of gold in New York, 
which had ruled at a premium of eight and seven 
eighths per cent., had fallen to five. On October 
20 the banks of New York, after waiting until 
Conofress rose, to meet the wishes of the United 
States Bank and its associates in Philadelphia, 
now invited representatives from all the banks to 
meet in New York on November 27 to prepare for 
specie payment. At this meeting the New York 
banks proposed resumption on March 1, 1838, but 
they were defeated ; and a resolution to resume on 
July 1 was defeated by the votes of Pennsylvania 
and all the New England States except Maine 
(which was divided), together with New Jersey^ 
Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina, and Indiana, 
Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Ken- 
tucky, and the District of Columbia, with New 
York, made the minority. An adjournment was 
taken to the second AYednesday in April, the 
banks being urged meanwhile to prepare for 
specie payments. 

The fall as w^ell as the summer elections had 
been most disastrous for the Democrats. New 
York, which the year before had given Van Buren 
nearly 30,000 plurality, was now overwhelmingly 
Whig. The Van Buren party began to be called 
the Loco-focos, in derision of the fancied extrava- 
gance of their financial doctrines. The Loco-foco 
or Equal Kights party proper was originally a di- 
vision of the Democrats, strongly anti-monopolist 
in their opinions, and especially hostile to banks, — 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 343 

not only government banks but all banks, — which 
enjoyed the j^rivileges then long confirmed by spe- 
cial and exclusive charters. In the fall of 1835 
some of the Democratic candidates in New York 
were especially obnoxious to the anti-monopolists ot 
the party. When the meeting to regularly confirm 
the nominations made in committee was called at 
Tammany Hall, the anti-monopolist Democrats 
sought to capture the meeting by a rush up the 
main stairs. The regulars, however, showed them- 
selves worthy of their regularity by reaching the 
room up the back stairs. In a general scrimmage 
the gas was put out. The anti-monopolists, per- 
haps used to the devices to jjrevent meetings which 
might be hostile, were ready with candles and loco 
foco matches. The hall was quickly illuminated ; 
and the anti-monopolists claimed that they had de- 
feated the nominations. The regulars were success- 
ful, however, at the election; and they and the 
Whigs dubbed the anti-monopolists the Loco-foco 
men. The latter in 1836 organized the Equal 
Rights party, and declared it an imperative duty 
of the people "to recur to first principles." Their 
" declaration of rights " might well have been 
drawn a few years later by a student of SpencerV 
" Social Statics." The law, they said, ought to do 
no more than restrain each man from committinsr 
aggressions on the equal rights of other men ; they 
declared " unqualified hostility to bank-notes and 
paper money as a circulating medium," and to aU 
special grants by the legislature. A great cry was 



344 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

raised against them as dangerous and incendiary 
fanatics. The Democratic press, except tlie '^ Even- 
ing Post," edited by William Cullen Bryant, turned 
violently upon the seceders. There was the same 
horror of them as the English at almost the very 
time had of the Chartists, and which in our time 
is roused by the political movements of Henry 
George. But with time and familiarity Chartism 
and Loco-focoism alike lost their horrid aspect. 
Several of the cardinal propositions of the former 
have been adopted in acts of Parliament without a 
vshudder. To the animosity of the Loco-focos 
against special legislation and special privileges 
Americans probably owe to-day some part of the 
beneficent movement in many of the States for coU' 
stitutional requirements that legislatures shall act 
by general laws. 

The Equal Rights party, though casting but a 
few votes, managed to give the city of New York 
to the Whigs, a result which convinced the Demo- 
crats that, dangerous as they were, they were less 
dangerous within than without the party. The 
hatred which Van Bui-en after his message of Sep- 
tember, 1837, received from the banks commended 
him to the Loco-focos ; and in October, 1887, 
Tammany Hall witnessed their reconciliation with 
the regular Democrats upon the moderate decla- 
ration for equal rights. Tlie Whigs had, indeed, 
been glad enough to have Loco-foco aid and even 
open alliance at the polls. But none the less 
they thought the Democratic welcome back of the 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 345 

seceders an enormity. From this time the Demo- 
crats were, it was clear, no better than Loco-focos, 
and ouE-ht to bear the name of those danoerous 
iconoclasts. 

Van Baren met Congress in December, 1837, 
with still undaunted front. His first general re- 
view of the operations of the government was but 
little lonfrer than his message to the extra session 
on the single topic of finance. He refused to con- 
sider the result of the elections as a popular disap- 
proval of the divorce of bank and state. In only 
one State, he ])ointed out, had a federal election 
been held ; and in the other elections, which had 
been local, he intimated that the fear of a forfeit- 
ure of the state-bank charters for their suspension 
of specie payments had determined the result. He 
still emphatically opposed the connection between 
the orovernment and the banks which could offer 
such strong inducements for political agitation. 
He blew another blast against the United States 
Bank, now a Pennsylvania corporation, for con- 
tinuing to reissue its notes originally made before 
its federal charter had expired and since returned„ 
He recommended a preemption law for the benefit 
of actual settlers on public lands, and a classifica- 
tion of lands under different rates, to encourage 
the settlement of the poorer lands near the older 
settlements. There was a conciliatory but firm 
reference to the dispute with England over the 
nortlieastern boundary. He announced his failure 
to adjust the dispute with Mexico over the claims 



346 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

wliicli had been pressed by Jackson. TLe Texan 
cloud which six years later brought Van Buren's 
defeat was already threatening*. 

At this session the independent or sub-treasury 
bill was again introduced, and again a titanic battle 
was waged in the Senate. In this encounter Clay 
taunted Calhoun for going over to the enemy ; and 
Calhoun, referring to the Adams-Clay coalition, 
retorted that Clay had on a memorable occasion 
gone over, and had not left it to time to disclose 
his motives. Here it was that, in the decorous 
fury of the times, both senators stam[)ed accusa- 
tions with scorn in the dust, and hurled back darts 
fallen harmless at their feet. The bill passed the 
Senate by 27 to 25 ; but Calhoun finally voted 
against it because there had been stricken out the 
provision that government dues should be paid in 
specie. The bill was again defeated in the House 
by 125 to 111. The latter vote was late in June, 
1838. But while Congress refused a law for it, 
the independent treasury in fact existed. Under 
the circular issued upon the bank suspension, the 
collection, keeping, and payment of federal moneys 
continued to be done by federal officers. The ab- 
surditv of the declamation about one's blood cur- 
dling at Van Buren's recommendations, about this 
being the system in vogue where people were 
ground '* to the very dust by the awful despotism 
of their rulers," was becoming apparent in the 
easy, natural operation of the system, dictated 
though it was by necessity rather than law. The 



INDEPENDENT TREASURY 347 

Whigs, in the sounding jeremiades of Webster and 
the perfervid eloquence of Clay, were joined by the 
Conservatives, former Democrats, with Tallmadge 
of New York and Rives of Virginia at their head. 
They had retired into the cave of suj^erior wisdom, 
of which many men are fond when a popular storm 
seems rising against their party ; they affected op- 
pressive grief at Van Buren's reckless hatred of 
the popular welfare, and accused him of designing 
entire destruction of credit in the ordinary trans- 
actions of business. This silly charge was con- 
tinually made, and gained color from the extreme 
doctrines of the Equal Rights movement and the 
fixing of the Loco-foco name upon the Democratic 
party. 

The sub-treasury bill was again taken up at the 
long session of 1839-40 by the Congress elected in 
1838. Again the wisdom of separating bank and 
state, again the wrong of using public moneys to 
aid private business and speculation, were stated 
with perfectly clear but uninspiring logic. Again 
came the antiphonal cry, warm and positive, against 
the cruelty of withdrawing the government from an 
affectionate care for the people, and from its duty 
generously to help every one to earn his living. In 
and out of Congress it wa^ the debate of the time, 
and rightly ; for it involved a profound and critical 
issue, which since the foundation of the govern- 
ment has been second in importance only to the 
questions of slavery and national existence and re- 
construction. In 1840 the bill passed the Senate by 



g48 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

24 to 18 and the House by 124 to 107. This chief 
monument of Van Buren's administration seemed 
quickly demolished by the triumphant Whigs in 
1841, but was finally set up again in 1846 without 
the aid of its architect. From that time to our 
own, in war and in peace, the independence of the 
federal treasury has been a cardinal feature of 
American finance. Nor was its theory lost even 
in the system of national banks and public deposi- 
tories created for the tremendous necessities of the 
civil war.^ 

By the spring of 1838 business had revived 
during the year of enforced industry and economy 
among the people. In January, 1838, the premium 
on gold at New York sank to three per cent. ; and 
when the bank convention met on the adjourned 
day in April, the premium was less than one per 
cent. The United States Bank resisted resumption 
with great affectation of public spirit, but for self- 
ish reasons soon to be disclosed. The New York 
banks, with an apology to their associates, resolved 
to resume by May 10, five days before the date to 
which the State had legalized the susj^ension. The 
convention adopted a resolution for general re- 
sumption on January 1, 1839, without precluding 
earlier resumption by any banks which deemed it 
proper. In April it was learned that the Bank of 

^ The depositories now authorized for the proceeds of the in- 
ternal revenue secured the government by a deposit of the bonds 
of the latter, which the depositories must of course purchase and 
bwa. {U. S. Bev. Stats. % blbS.) 



ABATEMENT OF THE CRISIS 349 

England was shipijing a million sterling to aid re- 
sumption by the banks. On July 10, Governor 
Ritner of Pennsylvania by proclamation required 
the banks o£ his State to resume by August 1. 
On the 13th of that month the banks of Mas= 
sachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, 
Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, I»« 
diana, and Illinois yielded to the moral coercion of 
the New York banks, and to the resumption now 
enforced on the Bank of the United States. By 
the fall of 1838 resumption was general, although 
the banks at the Southwest did not follow until 
midwinter. Confidence was so much restored that 
"runs" on the banks did not occur. The crisis 
seemed at an end ; and Van Buren not unreason- 
ably fancied that he saw before the country two 
years of steady and sound return to prosperity. 
Two such years would, in November, 1840, bring 
the reward of his sagacity and endurance. But a 
far deeper draft upon the vitality of the patient 
had been made than was supposed ; and in its 
last agony, eighteen months later, Biddle's bank 
helped to blast Van Buren's political ambition. 



CHAPTER X 

PRESIDENT. — CANADIAN INSURRECTION. — TEXAS. 
— SEMINOLE WAR. — DEFEAT FOR REELECTION 

Another unpopular duty fell to Van Buren 
during his presidency, a duty but for which New 
York might have been saved to him in 1840. In 
the Lower and Upper Canadas popular discontent 
and political tumult resulted late in 1837 in vio- 
lence, so often the only means by which English 
dependencies have brought their imperial mistress 
to a respect for their complaints.^ The liberality 
of the Whigs, then lately triumphant in England, 
was not broad enough to include these distant 
colonists. The provincial legislature in each of 
the Canadas consisted of a Lower House or assem- 
bly chosen by popular vote, and an Upper House 
or council appointed by the governor, who him- 
self was appointed by and represented the crown. 

1 I cannot refrain in this revised edition to note that Eng-land, 
although not always a ready scholar, has in later years learned a 
farseeing wisdom which in colonial administration makes lier the 
teacher of the world. The modern policy of deference to local 
sentiment and of finding her own advantage in the independent 
prosperity of the colony, has bound continents, islands, races, reli- 
gions, to the English empire, and brought from them wealth to 
England, as the old rule of force never did. 



CANADIAN INSURRECTION 351 

Keforms after reforms, proposed by the popular 
houses, were rejected by the council. In Lower 
Canada the popular opposition was among the 
French, who had never been embittered towards 
the United States. In Upper Canada its strength 
was amonof settlers who had come since the war 
closed in 1815. Lower Canada demanded in vain 
that the council be made elective. Its assembly, 
weary of the effectual opposition of the council to 
popular measures, began in 1832 to refuse votes of 
supplies unless their grievances were redressed ; 
and by 1837 government charges had accrued to 
the amount of X142,100. On April 14, 1837, 
Lord John Russell, still wearing the laurel of a 
victor for popular rights, procured from the im- 
perial parliament permission, without the assent of 
the colonial parliament, to apply to these charges 
the money in the hands of the receiver-general of 
Lower Canada. This extraordinary grant passed 
the House of Commons by 269 to 46. A far less 
flagitious case of taxation without representation 
had begun the American Revolution. The monej? 
had been raised under laws which provided for its 
expenditure by vote of a local representative body. 
It was expended by the vote of a body at West- 
minster, three thousand miles away, but few oi 
whose members knew or cared anything for the 
bleak stretch of seventeenth-century France on the 
lower St. Lawrence, and none of whom had con- 
tributed a penn}^ of it. To even Gladstone, lately 
the under-secretary for the colonies and then a 



352 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

" rising hope of unbending Tories," there seemed 
nothing involved but the embarrassment of faith- 
ful servants of the crown. This thoroughly Brit- 
ish disregard of sentiment among other people 
roused a deep opposition which was headed by 
Papineau, eloquent and a hero among the French. 
An insurrection broke out in November, 1837, and 
blood was shed in engagements at St. Denis and 
St. Charles, not far from Montreal. But the in- 
surgents were quickly defeated, and within three 
weeks the insurrection in Lower Canada was 
ended. 

In Upper Canada there was considerable Repub- 
lican sentiment, and the party of popular rights 
had among its leaders men of a high order of 
ability. One of them, Marshall S. Bid well, 
through the magnanimity or procurement of the 
governor, escaped from Canada to become one of 
the most honored and stately figures at the bar of 
New York. Early in 1836, Sir Francis B. Head, 
a clever and not ill-natured man, arrived as gov- 
ernor. He himself wrote the unconscious Angli- 
cism that " the great danger " he " had to avoid 
was the slightest attempt to conciliate any party.'* 
It was assumed with the usual insufferable affecta- 
tion of omniscience that these hardy Western set- 
tlers were merely children who did not know what 
was best for them. Even the suggestions of con- 
cession sent him from England were not respected. 
In an election for the Assembly he had the issue 
announced as one of separation from England; 



CANADIAN INSURRECTION 353 

and by the use, it was said, of his power and pa- 
tronage, the colonial Tories carried a majority of 
the House. Hopeless of any redress, and fired by 
the rumors of the revolt in Lower Canada, an 
insurrection took place early in December near 
Toronto. It was speedily suppressed. One of the 
leaders, Mackenzie, escaped to Buffalo. Others 
were captured and punished, some of them cap- 
itally. 

The mass of the Canadians were doubtless op- 
posed to the insurrection. But there was among 
them a widespread and reasonable discontent, with 
which the Americans, and especially the people of 
northern and western New York, warmly sympa- 
thized. It was natural and traditional to believe 
England an oppressor ; and there was every reason 
in this case to believe the Canadians right in their 
ill-feelino-. The refuaees who had fled to New 
York met with an enthusiastic reception, and, in 
the security of a foreign land, prepared to advance 
their rebellion. On the long frontier of river, 
lake, and wilderness, it was difficult, with the mea- 
gre force regularly at the disposal of the United 
States, to prevent depredations. This difficulty 
became enhanced by a culjmble though not un- 
natural invasion of American territory by British 
troops. On December 12, 1837, Maclcenzie, who 
had the day before arrived with a price of $4000 
set upon his head, addressed a large audience at 
Buffalo. Volunteers were called for; and the next 
^ay, with twenty-five men, commanded by Van 



854 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Kensselaer, an American, he seized Navy Island 
in the Niagara River, but a short distance above 
the cataract, and belonging to Canada. He there 
established a provisional government, with a flag 
and a great seal ; and that the new State might be 
complete, paper money was issued. By January, 
1838, there were several hundred men on the 
island, largely Americans, with arms and provi- 
sions chiefly obtained from the American side. 

On the night of December 29, 1837, a party of 
Canadian militia crossed the Niagara to seize the 
Caroline, a steamer in the service of the rebels 
It happened, however, that the steamer, instead oi 
being at Navy Island, was at Schlosser, on the^ 
American shore. The Canadians seized the vessel, 
killing several men in the affray, and after setting 
her on fire, loosened her from the shore, to go blaz- 
ing down the river and over the falls. This inva- 
sion of American territory caused indignant excite- 
ment through the United States. Van Buren had 
promptly sought to prevent hostility from our ter- 
ritory. On January 5, 1838, he had issued a pro- 
clamation reciting the seizure of Navy Island by a 
force, partly Americans, under the command of an 
American, with arms and supplies procured in the 
United States, and declared that the neutrality 
laws would be rigidly enforced and the offenders 
punished. Nor would they receive aid or counte- 
nance from the United States, into whatever diffi- 
culties they might be thrown by their violation of 
friendly territory. On the same day Van Buren 



CANADIAN INSURRECTION 355 

sent General Winfield Scott to the frontier, and 
by special message asked from Congress power to 
prevent such offenses in advance, as well as after- 
wards to punish them, — a request to which Con- 
gress, in spite of the excitement over the invasion 
at Schlosser, soon acceded. The militia of New 
York were, on this invasion, called out by Gov- 
ernor Marcy, and placed under General Scott's 
command. But there was little danger. On eJan- 
uary 13 the insurgents abandoned Navy Island. 
The war, for the time, was over, although excite- 
ment and disorder cimtinued on the border and 
the lakes as far as Detroit ; and in the fall of 183P 
other incursions were made from American ter 
ritory. But th-y were fruitless and short-lived 
Nearly nine hundred arrests were made by the 
Canadian authorities. Many death sentences were 
imposed and several executed, and many more 
offenders were sentenced to transportation. 

Eno-land, in her then usual fashion, was duly 
waked to duty by actual bli)odshed. Sir Francis 
B. Head left Canada, and the Melbourne ministry 
sent over the Earl of Durham, one of the finest 
characters in English public life, to be governor- 
general over the five colonies ; to redress their 
wrongs ; to conciliate, and perhaps yield to demands 
for self-o-overnment : all which might far better 
have been done five years before. Lord Durham 
used a wise mercy towards the rebels. He made 
rapid progress in the reforms, and, best and first 
of all, he won the coiifidence and affection of the 



956 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

people. But England used to distrust an Englisli 
statesman who practiced this kind of rule towards 
a dependenc}'. A malevolent attack of Lord 
Brougham was successful, and Lord Durham re- 
turned to ministerial disgrace, though to a wiser 
popular applause, soon to die in what ought to have 
been but an early year in his generous and splen- 
did career. Although punishing lier benefactor, 
England was shrewd enough to accept the benefit. 
The concessions which Lord Durham had beaun 
were continued, and Canada became and has re- 
mained loyal. Before leaving Canada, Lord Dur- 
ham was invited by a very complimentary letter of 
Van Buren to visit Washington, but the invitation 
was courteously declined. 

Mackenzie was arrested at Buffalo and indicted. 
After his indictment he addressed many public 
meetings through the United States in behalf of his 
cause, one at Washington itself. In 1839, how- 
ever, he was tried and convicted. Van Buren, 
justly refusing to pardon him until he had served 
in prison two thirds of his sentence, thus made for 
himself a persistent and vindictive enemy. 

Upon renewed raids late in 1838, the President, 
by a proclamation, called upon misguided or de- 
luded Americans to abandon projects dangerous to 
their own country and fatal to those whom they 
professed a desire to relieve ; and, after various 
appeals to good sense and jmtriotism, warned them 
that, if taken in Canada, they would be left to the 
policy and justice of the government whose doniin- 



ABATEMENT OF THE CRISIS 357 

ions tliey had, " without the shadow of justification 
or excuse, nefariously invaded." This had no un- 
certain sound. Van Buren was promptly declared 
to be a British tool. The plain facts were ignored 
that the great majority of the Canadians, however 
much displeased with theii rulers, were hostile to 
Republican institutions and to a separation from 
England, and that the majority in Canada had the 
same right to be governed in their own fashion as 
the majority here. There was seen, however, iu 
this firm performance of international obligations* 
only additional proof of Van Buren's coldness 
towards popular rights, and of his sycophancy to 
power. 

The system of allowing to actual settlers, at the 
minimum price, a preemption of public lands al- 
ready occupied by them, was adopted at the lon^ 
session of 1837-38. Webster joined the Demo 
crats in favoring the bill, against the hot opposi- 
tion of Clay, who declared it "• a grant of the pro- 
perty of the whole people to a small part of thft 
people." The dominant party was now wisely com 
mitted to the policy of using the public domain for 
settlers, and not as mere property to be turned into 
money. But a year or two before, the latter sys- 
tem had in practice wasted the national estate and 
corrupted the public wdth a debauchery of specula- 
tlon. 

The war between Mexico and the American set- 
tlers in her revolted northeast province began in 
1835. Early in 183t) the heroic defense of the 



858 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Alamo against several thousand Mexicans by less 
than two hundred Americans, and among them 
Davy Crockett, Van Buren's biographer, and the 
butchery of all but three of the Americans, had 
consecrated the old building, still proudly preserved 
by the stirring but now peaceful and pleasing city 
of San Antonio, and had roused in Texas a fierce 
and resolute hatred of Mexico. In April, 1836, 
Houston overwhelmed the Mexicans at San Jacinto, 
and captured their president, Santa Anna. 

In his message of December 21, 1836, Jackson, 
although he announced these successes of the Texans 
and tlieir expulsion of Mexican civil authority, still 
pointed out to Congress the disparity of physical 
force on the side of Texas, and declared it prudent 
that we should stand aloof until either Mexico 
itself or one of the great powers should have recog- 
nized Texan independence, or at least until the 
ability of Texas should have been proved beyond 
cavil. The Senate had then passed a resolution for 
recognition of Texan independence. But the House 
had not concurred ; and before Van Buren's inau- 
guration Conofress had done no more than author- 
ize the appointment of a diplomatic agent to Texas 
whenever the President should be satisfied of its 
independence. In August, 1837, the Texan repre- 
sentative at Washington laid before Van Buren a 
plan of annexation of the revolted Mexican state. 
The offer was refused ; and it was declared that the 
United States desired to remain neutral, and per- 
ceived that annexation would necessarily lead to 



TEXAS 359 

war with Mexico. In December, 1837, petitions 
were presented in Coiii^ress against the annexation of 
Texas, now mnch agitated at the South ; and Pres- 
ton, Calhoun's senatorial associate from South Car- 
olina, offered a resoluti(m for annexation. Some 
debate on the question was had in 1838, in which 
both the pro-slavery character of the movement 
and the anti-slavery character of the opposition 
clearly appeared. But this danger to Van Buren 
was delayed several years. Nor was he yet a char- 
acter in the drama of the slavery conflict which by 
1837 was well opened. The agitation over aboli- 
tion petitions and the murder of Lovejoy the abo- 
litionist are now readily enough seen to have been 
the most deeply significant occurrences in America 
between Van Buren's inauguration and his defeat ; 
but they were as little part of his presidency as the 
arrival at New York from Liverpool on April 22 
and 23, 1838, of the Sirius and the Great Western, 
the first transatlantic steamships. In Washington 
the slavery question did not get beyond the halls 
of Congress. The White House remained for sev- 
eral years free from both the dangers and the 
duties of the question accompanying the discussion^ 
Van Buren's administration pressed upon Mexico 
claims arising out of wrongs to American citizens 
and property which had long been a grievance. 
Jackson had thought it our duty, in view of the 
'■' embarrassed condition " of that republic, to "• act 
with both wisdom and moderation by giving to 
Mexico one more opportunity to atone for the paste" 



560 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

In December, 1837, Van Buren, tired of Mexican 
procrastination, referred the matter to Congress, 
with some menace in his tone. In 1840 a treaty 
was at last made for an arbitration of the claims, 
the king of Prussia being the umpire. John Quincy 
Adams vehemently assailed the American assertion 
of these claims, as intended to " breed a war with 
Mexico," and '' as machinery for the annexation 
of Texas ; " and his violent denunciations have ob- 
tained some credit. But Adams himself had been 
pretty vigorous in the maintenance of American 
rights. And the plain and well known facts are, 
that after several years of negotiation the claims 
were with perfect moderation submitted for decision 
to a disinterested tribunal ; that they were never 
made the occasion of war ; and that Van Buren op- 
posed annexation. 

In June, 1838, James K. Paulding, long the 
navy agent at New York, was made secretary of 
the navy in place of Mahlon Dickerson of New 
Jersey, who now resigned. Paulding seems to us 
rather a literary than a political figure. Besides 
the authorship of part of " Salmagundi," of " The 
Dutchman's Fireside," and of other and agreeable 
writings grateful to Americans in the days when 
the sting of the question, " Who reads an Ameri- 
can book ? " lay rather in its truth than in its ili- 
nature, Paulding's pen had aided the Republican 
party as early as Madison's presidency. Our poli- 
tics have always, even at home, paid some lionor to 
the muses, without requiring them to descend very 



WASHINGTON IRVING 361 

far into the partisan arena. A curious illustration 
was the nomination of Edwin Forrest, the famous 
tragedian, for Congress by the Democrats of New 
York in 1838, a nomination which was more sensi- 
bly declined than made. An almost equall}^ curious 
instance was the tender Van Buren made of the 
secretaryship of the navy to Washington Irving be- 
fore he offered it to Paulding, who was a connect 
tion by marriage of Irving's brother. Van Buren 
had, it wall be remembered, become intimately ac- 
quainted with Irving abroad ; and others than Van 
Buren strangely enough had thought of him for 
political service. The Jacksonians had wanted him 
to run for Congress ; and Tammany Hall had of- 
fered him a nomination for mayor of New York. 
Van Buren wrote to Irving that the latter had " in 
an eminent degree those peculiar qualities which 
should distinguish tha head of the department,'^ and 
that this oj^inion of his had been confirmed by Irv- 
ing's friends, Paulding and Kemble, the former of 
whom it was intimated was "particularly informed 
in resfard to the services to be rendered." But one 
cannot doubt that in writing this the President had 
in mind the sort of service to the public, and the 
personal pleasure and rest to himself, to be brought 
by a delightful and accomplished man of letters, 
who was no mere recluse, but long practiced in pol- 
ished and brilliant life abroad, rather than any 
business or executive or political ability. Irving 
wisely replied that he should delight in full occupa- 
tion, and should take peculiar interest in the navy 



362 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

department ; but that he shrank from the harsb 
turmoils of life at Washington, and the bitter per- 
sonal hostility and the slanders of the press. A 
short career at Washington would, he said, render 
him " mentally and physically a perfect wreck." 
Paulding's appointment to the cabinet portfolio 
assigned to New York was not agreeable to the 
politicians ; and they afterwards declared that, if 
Marcy had been chosen instead, the result in 1840 
might have been different. The next Democratic 
president gave the same place to another famous 
man of letters, George Bancroft. 

On June 6, 1837, Louis Napoleon wrote the 
President from New York that the dangerous ill- 
xiess of his mother recalled him to the old world ; 
and that he stated the reason for his dej^arture lest 
the President might "" have given credence to the 
calumnious surmises respecting " him. The famous 
adventurer used one of those many phrases of his 
which, if they had not for years imposed on the 
world, no wise man would believe could ever have 
obtained respect. Van Buren, as the ruler of a free 
people, ought to be advised, the prince wrote, that, 
bearing the name he did, it was impossible for him 
" to depart for an instant from the path pointed 
out to me by my conscience, my honor, and my 
duty." 

The elections of 1838 showed a recovery from 
the defeat in 1837, a recovery which would per- 
haps have been jjermanent if the financial crisis 
had been really over. Maine wheeled back into 



ELECTIONS OF 1838 363 

the Van Buren ranks ; and Maryland and Ohio 
now joined her. In New Jersey and Massachu- 
setts the Whig majorities were reduced ; and in 
New York, where Seward and Weed had estab- 
lished a political management quite equal to the 
Regency, the former was chosen governor by a 
majority of over 10,000, but still less by 5000 
than the Whig majority of 1837. The Democrats 
now reaped the unpopularity of Van Buren's u}> 
right neutrality in the Canadian troubles. North- 
ern and western New York gave heavy Whig 
majorities. Jefferson county on the very border, 
whicli had stood by Van Buren even in 1837, wenc 
over to the Whigs. 

Van Buren met Congress in December, 1838, 
with more cheerful words. The harvest had been 
bountiful, he said, and industry again prospered. 
The first half century of our Constitution was 
about to expire, after proving the advantage of a 
government " entirely dependent on tlie continual 
exercise of the popular will." He returned firmly 
to his lecture on economics and the currency, draw- 
ing happily, but too soon, a lesson from the short 
duration of the suspension of specie payments in 
1837 and the length of that in 1814. We had 
been saved, he said, the mortification of seeing our 
distresses used to fasten again upon us so " danger- 
ous an institution" as a national bank. The trea- 
sury would be able in the coming year to pay off the 
$8,000,000 outstanding of the 110,000,000 of trea- 
sury notes authorized at the extra session. Texas 



364 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

had withdrawn its application for admission to the 
Union. The final removal of the Indian tril)es to 
the west of the Mississippi in accordance with the 
Democratic policy was almost accomplished. There 
were but two blemishes on the fair record the White 
House sent to the Capitol. Swartwout, Jackson's 
collector of New York, was found, after his super- 
session by Jesse Hoyt, to be a defaulter on a vast 
scale. His defalcations, the President carefully 
pointed out, had gone on for seven years, as well 
while public moneys were kept with the United 
States Bank and while they were kept with state 
banks, as while they were kept by jiublic officers. 
It was broadly intimated that this disgrace was 
not unrelated to the general theory which had 
so long connected the collection and custody of 
public moneys with the advancement of private in- 
terests ; and the President asked for a law making 
it a felony to apply public moneys to private uses. 
Swartwout's appointment in 1829, as has been said, 
was strenuously opposed by Van Buren as unfit to 
be made. After a year or two Jackson returned 
to Van Buren his written protest, saying that time 
had proved his belief in Swartwout's unfitness to 
be a mistake. Van Buren's own appointment to 
the place was, however, far from an Ideal one. 
Jesse Hoyt was shown by his published correspond- 
ence — a veritable instance, by the way, of " stolen 
sweets" — to have been a shrewd, able man, who 
enjoyed the strangely varied confidence of many 
distinguished, discreet, and honorable men, and of 



SECOND FLORIDA WAR 365 

many very different persons, ranging through a 
singular gamut of religion, morals, statesmanship, 
economics, politics, patronage, banking, trade, stock 
gambling, and betting. The respectability of some 
of Hoyt's friends and his possession of some ability 
palliate, but do not excuse, his appointment to a 
great post. 

The second Florida war still dragged out its slow 
and murderous length. The Seminoles underpres- 
sure had yielded to Jackson's firm policy of remov- 
ing all the Indian tribes to the west of the Missis- 
sippi. The policy seemed, or rather it was, often 
cruel, as is so much of the progress of civilization. 
But the removal was wise and necessary. Tribal 
and independent governments by nomadic savages 
could not be tolerated within regions devoted to the 
arts and the government of white men. Whatever 
the theoretical lights of property in land, no civil- 
ized race near vast areas of lands fit for the tillagfe 
of a crowding population has ever permitted them 
to remain mere hunting grounds for savages. 
The Seminoles in 1832, 1833, and 1834 agreed to 
go west upon terms like those accepted by other 
Indians. The removal was to take place, one third 
of the tribe in each of the three years 1833, 1834, 
and 1835 ; but the dark-skinned men, as their white 
brothers would have done, found or invented ex- 
cuses for not keeping their promise of voluntary 
expatriation. Late in 1835, when coercion, al- 
' hough it had not yet been employed against the 
Jeminoles, was still feared by them, they rose under 



566 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

their famous leader, the half-breed Powell, better 
known as Osceola, and massacred the federal agent 
and Major Dade, and 107 out of 111 soldiers under 
him. Then followed a series of butcheries and out- 
rages upon white men of which we have heard, and 
doubtless of crimes enough upon Indians of which 
we have not heard. Among the everglades, the 
swamps and lakes of Florida, its scorching sands 
and impenetrable thickets, a difficult, tedious, in- 
glorious, and costly contest went on. Military evo- 
lutions and tactics were of little value ; it was a 
war of ambushes and assassination. Osceola, 
coming with a flag of truce, was taken by General 
Jessup, the defense for his capture being his viola- 
tion of a former parole. He was sent to Fort Moul- 
trie, in Charleston harbor, and there died, after fur- 
nishing recitations to generations of schoolboys, 
and sentiment to many of their elders. Van Buren 
had been compelled to ask #1,600,000 from Con- 
gress at the extra session. Before his administra- 
tion was ended nearly 114,000,000 had been spent ; 
and not until 1842 did the war end. It was one 
of the burdens of the administration which served 
to irritate a people already uneasy for deeper and 
more general reasons. The prowess of the Indian 
chief, his eloquence, his pathetic end, the miseries 
and wrongs of the aborigines, the cost and delay 
of the war, all reenforced the denunciation of Van 
Buren by men who made no allowance for embar- 
rassments which could be surmounted by no ability, 
because they were inevitable to the settlement by a 



NORTHEAST BOUNDARY 367 

civilized race of lands used by savages. Time, 
however, has vindicated the justice and mercy, as 
well as the policy of the removal, and of the estab- 
lishment of the Indian Territory. 

A few days before the close of the session Van 
Buren asked Congress to consider the dispute with 
Great Britain over the northeast boundary. Both 
Maine and New Brunswick threatened, by rival 
military occupations of the disputed territory, to 
precipitate war. Van Buren permitted the civi) 
authorities of Maine to protect the forests from 
destruction ; but disajjproved any military seizure, 
and told the state authorities that he should pro- 
pose arbitration to Great Britain. If, however. 
New Brunswick sought a military occupation, he 
should defend the territory as part of the State. 
Congress at once authorized the President to call 
out 50,000 volunteers, and put at his disposal a 
credit of 110,000,000. Van Buren persisted in 
his great effort peacefully to adjust the claims of 
our chronically belligerent northeastern patriots, — 
in Maine as in New York finding his fate in his duty 
firmly and calmly to restrain a local sentiment in- 
spiring voters of great political importance to him. 
The " news from Maine " in 1840 told of the angry 
contempt the hardy lumbermen felt for the Pre* 
sident's perfectly statesmanlike treatment of the 
question. 

In the summer of 1839 Van Buren visited his 
old home at Kinderhook ; and on his way there 
and back enjoyed a burst of enthusiasm at Yoris, 



568 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Harrisbiirg, Lebanon, Reading, and Easton in 
Pennsylvania, at Newark and Jersey City in New 
Jersey, and at New York, Hudson, and Albany in 
his own State. There were salutes of artillery, 
pealing of bells, mounted escorts in blue and white 
scarfs, assemblings of "youth and beauty," the 
complimentary addresses, the thronging of citizens 
"to grasp the hand of the man whom they had 
delighted to honor," and all the rest that makes 
up the ovations of Americans to their black-coated 
rulers. He hmded in New York at Castle Grar- 
den, amid the salutes of the forts on Bedloe's, 
Governor's, and Staten Islands, and of a " seventy- 
four," whose yards were covered with white uni- 
formed sailors. After the reception in Castle 
Garden he mounted a spirited black horse and 
reviewed six thousand troops assembled on the 
Battery ; and then went in procession along Broad- 
way to Chatham Street, thence to the Bowery, and 
through Broome Street and Broadway back to the 
City Hall Park. Not since Lafayette's visit had 
there been so fine a reception. At Kinderhook he 
was overwhelmed with the affectionate pride of his 
old neighbors. He declined public dinners, and 
by the simple manner of his travel offered disproof 
of the stories about his " English servants, horses 
and carriages." The journey was not, however, 
like the good-natured and un]mrtisan presidential 
journeys of our time. The Whigs often churlishly 
refused to help in what they said was an election, 
ijering tour. Seward publicly refused the invita^ 



ENTHUSIASTIC DEMONSTRATIONS 369 

fcion of the common council of New York to par- 
ticipate in the President's reception, beirause the 
State had honored him with the office of governor 
for his disapproval of Van Buren's political char- 
acter and public polic}^ and because an accept- 
ance of the invitation '' would afford evidence of 
inconsistency and insincerity/' Van Buren's own 
friends gave a party air to much of the welcome. 
Democratic connnittees were conspicuous in the 
ceremonies ; and in many of the addresses much 
that was said of his administration was fairly in a 
dispute certain to last until the next year's election 
was over. Van Buren could hardly have objected 
to the coldness of the Whigs, for his own speeches^ 
though decorous and respectful to the last degree 
to those who differed from him, were undisguised 
appeals for popular support of his financial policy. 
At New York he referred to the threatening dis- 
satisfaction in his own State concerning his firm 
treatment of the Canadian troubles. But he was 
persuaded, he said, that good sense and ultimately 
just feeling would give short duration to these un- 
favorable impressions. 

The President was too experienced and cool in 
judgment to exaggerate the significance of superfi- 
cial demonstrations like these, which often seemed 
conclusive to his exuberant rival Clay. He was 
encouraged, however, by the elections of 1839. In 
Ohio the Whigs were " pretty essentially used up," 
though unfortunately not to remain so a twelve- 
month. In Massachusetts Morton, the Van Buren 



870 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

candidate for governor, was elected by just one 
vote more than a majority of the 102,066 votes 
cast. Georgia, New Jersey, and Mississippi gave 
administration majorities. In New York the ad- 
verse majority which in 1837 had been over 15,000, 
and in 1838 over 10,000, was now less than 4000, 
in spite of the disaffection along the border coun- 
ties. It was not an unsatisfactory result, although 
for the first time since 1818 the legislature was 
completely lost. Another year. Van Buren now 
hoped, would bring a complete recovery from the 
blow of 1837. But the autumn of 1839 had also 
brought a blast, to grow more and more chilling 
and disastrous. 

In the early fall the Bank of the United States 
aerreed to loan Pennsvlvania 82,000.000 ; and for 
the loan obtained the privilege of issuing i5 notes, 
having before been restricted to notes of f 20 and 
upwards. " Thus has the Van Buren State of 
Pennsylvania," it was boasted, " enabled the banks 
to overcome the reckless system of a Van Buren 
national administration." The price of cotton, 
which had risen to 16 cents a pound, fell in the 
summer of 1839, and in 1840 touched as low a 
point as 5 cents. In the Northwest many banks 
had not yet resumed since 1837. To avoid execu- 
tion sales it was said that two hundred plantations 
had been abandoned and' their slaves taken to 
Texas. The sheriff, instead of the ancient return, 
nulla bona^ was said, in the grim sport of the 
frontier, to indorse on the fruitless writs " G. T.,'' 



RETURN OF THE CRISIS 371 

meaning " Gone to Texas." A money stringency 
again appeared in England, in 1839. Its expor- 
tation of goods and money to America had again 
become enormous. The customs duties collected 
in 1839 were over 123,000,000, and about the 
same as they had been in 1836, having fallen in 
1837 to 111,000,000, and afterwards in 1840 fall- 
ing to $13,000,000. Speculation revived, the land 
sales exceeding f 7,000,000 in 1839, while they had 
been 13,700,000 in 1838, and afterwards fell to 
$3,000,000 in 1840. Under the pressure from 
England the Bank of the United States sank 
with a crash. The *' Philadelphia Gazette," com- 
placently ignoring the plain reasons for months 
set before its eyes, said that the disaster had " its 
chief cause in the revulsion of the opium trade 
with the Chinese ; " that upon the news that the 
Orientals would no longer admit the drug the 
Bank of England had " fairly reeled ; " and that, 
the balance of trade being against us, we had to 
'dishonor our paper. Explanations of like frivolity 
got wide credence. The Philadelphia banks sus- 
pended on October 9, 1839, the banks of Baltimore 
the next day, and in a few days the banks in the 
North and West followed. The banks of New 
York and New England, except those of Provi- 
dence, continued firm. Although the excitement 
of 1839 did not equal that of 1837, there was a 
duller and completer despondency. It was at last 
known that the recuperative power of even our 
own proud and bounding country had limits. 



572 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Years were yet necessary to a recovery. But the 
presidential election would not, alas ! wait years. 
With no faltering, however. Van Buren met Con- 
gress in December, 1839. He began his message 
with a regret that he could not announce a year of 
"unalloyed prosperity." There ought never, as 
presidential messages had run, to be any alloy in 
the prosperity of the American people. But the 
harvest, he said, had been exuberant, and after all 
(for the grapes of trade and manufacture were a 
little sour), the steady devotion of the husbandman 
was the surest source of national prosperity. A 
part of the 810,000,000 of treasury notes was still 
outstanding, and he hoped that they might be 
paid. We must not resort to the ruinous practice 
of supplying supposed necessities by new loans ; a 
permanent debt was an evil with no equivalent. 
The expenditures for 1838, the first year over 
whose appropriations Van Buren had had control, 
had been less than those of 1837. In 1839 they 
had been $6,000,000 less than in 1838 ; and for 
1840 they would be -f 5,000,000 less than in 1839. 
The collection and disbursement of public moneys 
by public officers rather than by banks had, since 
the bank suspensions in 1837, been carried on 
with unexpected cheapness and ease ; and legisla- 
tion was alone wanting to insure to the system the 
highest security and facility. Nothing daunted by 
the second disaster so lately clouding his political 
future, Van Buren sounded another blast against 
tho banks. With unusual abundance of harvests, 



RETURN OF THE CRISIS 373 

with manufactures richly rewarded, with our gra- 
naries and storehouses filled with surplus for 
export, with no foreign war, with nothing indeed 
to endanger well-managed banks, this banking dis- 
aster had come. The government ought net to 
be dependent on banks as its depositories, for the 
banks outside of New York and Philadelphia were 
dependent upon the banks in those great cities, 
and the latter banks in turn upon London, '' the 
centre of the credit system." With some truth, 
but still with a touch of demagogy, venial perhaps 
in the face of the blatant and silly outcries against 
him from very intelligent and respectable people, 
he said that the founding of a new bank in a dis- 
tant American village placed its business '^ within 
the influence of the money power of England.'^ 
Let us then, he argued, have gold and silver and 
not bank-notes, at least in our j)ublic transactions ; 
let us keep public moneys out of the banks. Again 
he attacked the national bank scheme. In 1817 
and 1818, in 1823, in 1831, and in 1834 the United 
States Bank had swelled and maddened the tides 
of banking, but had seldom allayed or safely di- 
rected them. Turning with seemingly cool resolu- 
tion, but with hidden anxiety, to the menacing 
distresses of the American voters, he did not 
flinch or look for fair or flattering words. We 
must not turn for relief, he said, to gigantic banks, 
or splendid though profitless railroads and canals. 
Relief was to be sought, not by the increase, but 
by the diminution of debt. The faith of States 



374 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

already pledged was to be punctiliously kept ; but 
we must be chary of further pledges. The boun- 
ties of Providence had come to reduce the conse- 
quences of past errors. *' But let it be indelibly 
engraved on our minds," he said, '^ that relief is 
not to be found in expedients. Indebtedness can- 
not be lessened by borrowing more money, or by 
chano-ino; the form of the debt." 

The House of Representatives was so divided 
that its control depended upon whether five Whig 
or five Democratic congressmen from New Jersey 
should be admitted. They had been voted for 
upon a general ticket through the whole State ; and 
xhe Whig governor and council had given the certi- 
ticate of election to the Whigs by acquiescing in 
the actions of the two county clerks who had, for 
irreaularities, thrown out the Democratic districts 
^f South Amboy and Millville. A collision arose 
^Juriously like the dispute over the electoral returns 
from Florida and Louisiana in 1877. This exclu- 
sion of the two districts the Democrats insisted to 
have been wrongful ; and not improbably with rea- 
son, for at the next election in 1839 the State, 
upon the popular vote, gave a substantial majority 
against the Whigs, although by the district division 
of the State a majority of the legislature were 
Whigs and reelected the Whig governor. The 
clerk of the national House had, according to usage, 
prepared a roll of members, which he proceeded to 
call. He seems to have placed on the roll the 
uames of the New Jersey representatives holding 



DISPUTED ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE 375 

the governor's certificates. But before calling their 
names, he stated to the House that there were 
rival credentials ; that he felt that he had no power 
to decide upon the contested rights ; and that, if 
the House approved, he would pass over the names 
until the call of the other States was finished. The 
rival credentials included a record of the votes 
upon which the governor's certificate was presumed 
to be based. Objection was made to passing New 
Jersey, and one of the governor's certificates was 
read. The New Jerseymen with certificates in- 
sisted that their names should be called. The clerk 
declined to take any step without the authority of 
the House, holding that he was in no sense a chair- 
man. He behaved in the case with modesty and 
decorum, and the savage criticisms upon him seem 
to have no foundation except this refusal of his to 
decide upon the jwima facie right to the New 
Jersey seats, or to act as chairman except upon 
unanimous consent. He was clearly right. He 
had no power. The very roll he prepared, and his 
reading it, had no force except such as the House 
chose to give them. Upon any other theory he 
would practically wield an enormous power justified 
neither by the Constitution nor by any law. On 
the fourth da}^ of tumult a simple and lawful 
remedy was discovered to be at hand. Any mem- 
ber could himself act as chairman to put his own mo- 
tion for the appointment of a temporary speaker; 
and if a majority acquiesced, there was at once 
an organization without the clerk's aid. This was 



376 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

in precise accord with the attitude of the clerk, 
hotlj abused as he was by Adams and others who 
adopted his position. So Adams proj^osed himself 
to put the question on his own motion to call the 
roll with the members holding certificates. Further 
confusion then ensued, which was terminated by 
Khett of South Carolina, who moved that John 
Quincy Adams act as chairman until a speaker 
should be chosen. Rhett put his own motion, and 
it was carried. Adams took the chair, rules were 
adopted, and order succeeded chaos. None of the 
New Jersey men were permitted to vote for speaker, 
but a few Calhoun Democrats refused to vote for 
the administration candidate. Most of the adminis- 
tration members offered to accept a Calhoun man ; 
but a few of them, naturally angry at South Caro- 
lina dictation, refused, under Benton's advice, to 
vote for him. At last the Whigs joined tlie Cal- 
houn men, and ended this extraordinary contest. 
The speaker, Robert M. T. Hunter, was a so-called 
states-rights man, and a supporter of the IndejDend- 
ent treasury scheme. He had the fortune, after a 
singularly varied and even important career in the 
United States and the Confederate States, to be 
appointed by President Cleveland to the petty 
place of collector of customs at Tappahannock, in 
Virginia, and to live among Americans who were 
familiar with his prominence fifty years ago, but 
supposed him long since dead. The clerk, Hugh 
A. Garland, was reelected, in spite of what Adams 
in his diary, after his picturesque but utterly 



ELECTION OF 1840 377 

unjustifiable fashion, called the "baseness of his 
treachery to his trust." The Whig New Jerseyrneri 
were refused seats, and the apparent j^erversion of 
the popular vote was rightly defeated by seating 
their rivals. The Whigs posed as defenders oi 
the sanctity of state authority, and sought, upon 
that political issue, to force the Van Buren men to 
be the apologists for centralization. 

It was at this session that the sub- treasury bill 
was passed. As a sort of new declaration of in- 
dependence Van Buren signed it on July 4, 1840. 
His long and honorable and his greatest battle was 
won. It was the triumph of a really great cause. 
The people, by their labor and capital, were to 
support the federal government as a mere agency 
for limited purposes. That government was not, 
in this way at least, to support or direct or control 
either the people or their labor or capital. But 
the captain fell at the time of his victory. The 
financial disaster of 1839 had exhausted the g"ood- 
nature and jiatience of the people. Dissertations 
on finance and economics, however wise, now served 
to irritate and disgust. These cool admonitions to 
economy and a minding of one's business were 
popularly believed to be heartless and repulsive. 

In 1840 took place the most extraordinary of pre- 
sidential campaigns. While Congress was wran- 
gling over the New Jersey episode in December, 
1839, the Whig national convention again nomi- 
nated Harrison for President. Tyler was taken 
from the ranks of seceding Democrats as the can^ 



378 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

didate for Vice-President. The slaughter of Henry 
Clay, the father of the Whig party, had been 
effected by the now formidable Whig politicians 
of New York, cunningly marshaled by Thurlow 
Weed. Availability had its first complete triumph 
4n our national politics. They had not come, Gov- 
ernor Barbour of Virginia, the president of the 
Whio" convention, said, to whine after the flesh- 
pots of Egypt, but to give perpetuity to Republican 
institutions. To reach this end (not very explicitly 
or intelligibly defined), it mattered not wliat letters 
of the alphabet spelled the name of the candidate ; 
for his part, he could sing Hosanna to any alpha- 
betical combination. No platform or declaration 
of principles was adopted, lest some of those dis- 
contented with Van Buren should find there a 
counter-irritant. The candidates, in accepting their 
nominations, refrained from political discussion. 
Harrison stood for the plain, honest citizen, com- 
ing, as one of the New York conventions said, 
•' like another Cincinnatus from his plough," reso- 
lute for a generous administration, and ready to 
diffuse prosperity and to end hard times. Tyler, 
formerly a strict constructionist member of the 
Jackson part}^, was nominated to catch votes, in 
spite of his perfectly well known opposition to the 
whole Whig theory of government. 

The Democratic, or Democratic-Republican, con- 
vention met at Baltimore on May 5, 1840. The 
party name was now definitely and exclusively 
adopted. Among the delegates were men long 



ELECTION OF 1840 37S 

afterwards famous in the later Republican party, 
John A. Dix, Hannibal Hamlin, Simon Cameron. 
There was an air of despondency about the con- 
vention, for the enthusiasm over *' log cabin and 
hard cider " was already abroad. But the conven- 
tion without wavering announced its belief in a 
limited federal power, in the separation of public 
moneys from banking institutions ; and its oppo- 
sition to internal improvements by the nation, to 
the federal assumption of state debts, to the fost- 
ering of one industry so as to injure another, to 
raising more money than was required for neces- 
sary expenses of government, and to a national 
bank. Slavery now took for a long time its place 
in the party platform. The convention declared 
the constitutional inability of Congress to interfere 
with slavery in the States, and that all efforts of 
abolitionists to induce Congress to interfere with 
slavery were alarming and dangerous to the Union. 
An elaborate address to the people was issued. It 
began with a clear, and for a political campaign a 
reasonably moderate, defense of Van Buren's ad- 
ministration ; it renewed the well-worn arguments 
for the limited activity of government ; it made a 
silly assertion that Harrison was a Federalist, and 
an insinuation that the glory of his military career 
was doubtful ; it denounced the abolitionists, whose 
fanaticism it charged the Whigs with enlisting in 
their cause. In closing, it recalled the Democratic 
revolution of 1800 which broke the " iron rod of 
Federal rule," and contrasted the " costly and 



380 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

stately pageants addressed merely to the senses'* 
by the Whigs with the truth and reason of the 
Democracy. 

During the canvass Van Buren submitted to 
frequent interrogation. In a fashion that would 
secern fatal to a modern candidate, he wTote to 
political friends and enemies alike, letter after let- 
ter, restating his political opinions. Especially 
was it sought to arouse Southern distrust of him. 
He was accused, with fire-eating anger, of having 
approved a sentence of a court-martial against a 
naval lieutenant which was based upon the tes- 
timony of negroes. He reiterated what he had 
already said upon slavery ; but late in the canvass 
he went one step further. When asked his opinion 
as to the treatment by Congress of the abolition 
petitions, he replied, justly enough, that the Presi- 
dent could have no concern with that matter ; but 
lest he should be charged with " non-committal- 
ism," he declared that Congress was fully justified 
in adopting the " gag " rule. For years the peti- 
tions had been received and referred. On one 
occasion in each House the subject had been con- 
sidered u])on a report of a committee, and decided 
against the petitioners with almost entire una- 
nimity. The rule had been adopted only after it 
was clear that the petitioners simply sought to 
make Cono-ress an instrument of an aoitation which 
might lead to a dissolution of the Union. It was 
thus that Van Buren made his extreme conces^ 
sion to the slavocracy. And there was obvious a 



ELECTION OF 1840 381 

material excuse. No president while in office could 
approve the perversion of legislative procedure from 
the making of laws to be a mere stimulant of moral 
excitement. To encourage or justify petitions in- 
tended to inflame public sentiment against a wrong 
might be legitimate for some men, however well 
they knew, as Adams said he knew, that the body 
addressed ought not to grant the petitioners' pray- 
ers. Such a course miglit be noble and praise- 
worthy for a private citizen, or possibly for a 
member of Congress representing the exalted moral 
sentiment or a single district. It would be highly 
illegitimate for a man holding a great public office, 
and there representing the entire people and its 
established system of laws. John Quincy Adams, 
under his sense of duty as president, had in 1828 
pressed the humiliating claim tliat England should 
surrender American slaves escaped to English free- 
dom ; and there is little reason to doubt that, if he 
had remained in the field of responsible and ex- 
ecutive public life, he would have agreed with Van 
jBuren in his treatment of the matter of the aboli- 
tion petitions, or rather in his expressions from the 
White House about them. 

Harrison hastened to clear his skirts of aboli- 
tionism. Congress could not, he declared, abolish 
slavery in the District of Columbia without the 
consent of Virginia and Maryland and of the Dis- 
trict itself. For, as he argued, ignobly applying, 
as well as misquoting, the American words solemnly 
lauded by Lord Chatham in his gpeecli on Quarter- 



382 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ing Soldiers in Boston, " what a man has honestly 
acquired is absolutely his own, which he may freely 
give, but which cannot be taken from him with- 
out his consent." He denounced as a slander the 
charge that he was an abolitionist, or that the vote 
he had given against anti-slavery restriction in 
Missouri had violated his conscience. He declared 
for the right of petition, which indeed nobody dis- 
puted ; but he did not say what course should be 
taken with the anti-slavery petitions, which was the 
real question to be answered. The discussion by 
the citizens of the free States of slavery in the 
slave States was not, he said, " sanctioned by the 
Constitution." " Methinks," he said at Dayton, 
"I hear a soft voice asking. Are you in favor of 
paper money ? I am ; " and to that there were 
" shouts of applause." 

In no presidential canvass in America has there 
been, as Mr. Schurz well says in his life of Henry 
Clay, " more enthusiasm and less thought " than 
in the Whig canvass of 1840. The people were 
rushing as from a long restraint. Wise saws 
about the duties of government had become nau- 
seating. A plain every-day man administering 
a paternal and affectionate government was the 
ruling text, while Tyler and his strict construction 
quietly served their turn with some of the doctri- 
naires at the South. The nation. Clay said, was 
" like the ocean when convulsed by some terrible 
storm." There was what he called a " rabid appe 
tite for public discussions." 



ELECTION OF 1840 383 

Webster's campaign speeches probably marked 
the height of the splendid and effectual flood of 
eloquence now poured over the land. The breeze 
of popular excitement, he said, with satisfactory 
magniloquence, was flowing everywhere ; it fanned 
the air in Alabama and the Carolinas ; and cross- 
ing the Potomac and the Alleghanies, to mingle 
with the gales of the Empire State and the moun- 
tain blasts of New England, would blow a perfect 
hurricane. " Every breeze," he declared, " says 
change ; the cry, the universal cry, is for a change." 
He had not, indeed, been born in a log cabin, but 
his elder brothers and sisters had ; he wept to 
think of those who had left it ; and if he failed in 
affectionate veneration for him who raised it, then 
might his name and the name of his posterity be 
blotted from the memory of mankind. He touched 
the bank question lightly ; he denounced the sub- 
treasury as " the first in a new series of ruthless 
experiments," and declared that Van Buren's 
" abandonment of the currency " was fatal. For- 
getting who had supported and who had opposed 
the continued distribution of surplus revenues 
among the States, he condemned the President 
for the low state of the treasury ; and notwith- 
standing it declared his approval of a generous 
policy of internal improvements. He would not 
accuse the President of seeking to play the part of 
Caesar or Cromwell because Mr. Poinsett, his sec- 
retary of war, had recommended a federal organi- 
sation of militia, the necessity or convenience of 



384 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

which, it was supposed, had been demonstrated by 
the Canadian troubles ; but the plan, he said, was 
expensive, unconstitutional, and dangerous to our 
liberties. He was careful to say nothing of slavery 
or the right of petition. Only in brief and casual 
sentences did he even touch the charges that Van 
Buren had treated political contests as " rightfully 
struofoies for office and emolument,*' and that fed- 
eral officers had been assessed in proportion to 
their salaries for partisan purposes. The President 
was pictured as full of cynical and selfish disre- 
gard of the people; he had disparaged the credit 
of the States ; he had accused Madison, and, mon- 
strous sacrilege, even Washington, of corruption, 
" I may forgive this," Webster slowly said to the 
appalled audience, " but I shall not forget it ; " 
such " abominable violations of the truth of his- 
tory " filled his bosom with '' burning scorn." 
This was a highly imaginative allusion to Van 
Buren's statement that the national bank had been 
originally devised by the friends of privileged 
orders. Nor need the South, even Webster inti- 
mated, have any fear of the Whigs about slavery. 
Could the South believe that Harrison would " lay 
ruthless hands on the institutions among which he 
was born and educated? " No, indeed, for Wash- 
ington and Hancock, Virginia and Massachusetts, 
had joined their thoughts, their hopes, their feel- 
ings. " How many bones of Northern men," he 
asked with majestic pathos, *' lie at Yorktown ? " 
Senator Rives, now one of the Conservatives, said 



ELBCTION OF 1840 385 

that Van Buren was indeed " mild, smooth, affable, 
smiling ; " but humility was " young and old 
ambition's ladder." The militia project meant 
military usurpation. Look at Cromwell, he said ; 
look at Bonaparte. Were their usurpations not in 
the name of the people ? Preston of South Caro- 
lina said that Van Buren had advocated diminished 
wages to others ; now he should himself receive 
diminished wages. Harrison was, he said " a 
Southern man with Southern principles." As for 
Van Buren, this " Northern man with Southern 
principles," did he not come " from beyond the 
Hudson," had he not been "a friend of Rufus 
King, a Missouri restrictionist, a friend and advo- 
cate of free negro suffrage ? " Clay said that it 
was no time " to argue ; " a rule his party for the 
moment well observed. The nation had already 
pronounced upon the ravages Van Buren had 
brought upon the land, the general and wide- 
spread ruin, the broken hopes. With the mere 
fact of Harrison's election, " without reference to 
the measures of his administration," he told the 
Viroinians at Hanover, '' confidence will inimedi- 
ately revive, credit be restored, active business 
will return, prices of products will rise ; and tlm 
people will feel and know that, instead of their 
servants being occupied in devising measures fot 
their ruin and destruction, they will be assiduf^usly 
employed in promoting their welfare and pro- 
sperity." 

All this was far more glorious than the bru^.^lly 



386 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

true advice of the old man with a broad-axe on his 
shoulders, whom the Democrats quoted. When 
asked what was to become of everybody in the 
heavy distress of the panic, he answered, '' Damn 
the panic ! If you would all work as I do, you 
would have no panic." The people no longer 
cared about " the interested few who desire to en- 
rich themselves by the use of public money." If, 
as the Democrats said, the interested few had been 
thwarted, an almost universal poverty had for 
some reason or other come with their defeat. 
Perhaps the reflecting citizen thought tliat he 
might become, if he were not already, one of the 
^' interested few." Nor was the demagogy all on 
the side of the Whigs, although they enjoyed the 
more popular quality of the quadrennial product, 
Van Buren himself, in the futile fashion of aging 
parties wliich suppose that their ancient victories 
still stir the popular heart, recalled " the reign of 
terror " of the elder Adams, and how the " Samson 
of Democracy burst the cords which were already 
bound around its limbs," how " a web more art- 
fully contrived, composed of a high protective 
tariff, a system of internal improvements, and a 
national bank, was then twined around the sleep- 
ing giant " until he was " roused by the warning 
voice of the honest and intrepid Jackson." Har- 
rison's own numerous speeches were awkward and 
indefinite enough ; but still they showed an hon- 
est and sincere man, and in the enthusiasm of the 
day they did him no harm. 



ELECTION OF 1840 387 

The revolts against the severe party discipline 
of the Democracy, aided by the popular distress., 
were serious. Calhoun, indeed, had returned ; but 
all his supporters did not return with him. The 
Southern defection headed by White in 1836 was 
still most formidable, and was now reenforced by 
the Conservative secession North and South. 
Even Major Eaton forgot Van Buran's gallantry 
ten years before, and joined the enemy. The talk 
of " spoils " was amply justified ; but the abuses 
of patronage had not prevented Jackson's popu- 
larity, and under Van Buren they were far less 
serious. This cry did not yet touch the American 
people. The most serious danger of " spoils " still 
lay in the future. Patron-ige abuses had injured 
xhe efficiency of the public service, but they had 
not yet begun to defeat the popular will. Jackson 
came resolutely to Van Baren's aid in the fashion- 
able letter-writing. '' The Rives Conservatives, 
the Abolitionists and Federalists " had combined, 
the ex-President vivaciously said, to obtain power 
" by falsehood and slander of the basest kind ; " 
but the '' virtue of the ])eople," he declared in 
what from other, lips would have seemed cant, 
would defeat '' the money power." Van Buren's 
firmness and ability entitled him, he thought, to a 
rank not inferior to Jefferson or Madison, while 
he rather unhandsomelj^ added that he had never 
admired Harrison as a military man. 

The Whig campaign was highly picturesque. 
Meetings were measured by " acres of men." 



388 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

They gathered on the field of Tippecanoe. Revo- 
lutionary soldiers nuirehed in venerable proces- 
sions. Wives and daughters came with their 
husbands and fathers. There were the barrel of 
cider, the coon-skins, and the log cabin with the 
live raccoon running over it and the latch-string 
huno' out : for Harrison had told his soldiers wdien 
he left them, that never should his door be shut, 
" or the string of the latch pulled in." Van 
Buren meantime, with an aristocratic sneer upon 
his face, was seated In an English carriage, after 
feeding himself from the famous gold spoons 
bouo^ht ft)r the White House. Harrison was a 
hunter who had caught a fox before and w^ould 
again ; one of the county processions from Penn- 
sylvania boasted, " Old Mother Cumberland — 
she '11 bao' the fox." Illinois would " teach the 
palace slaves to respect the log cabin." " Down 
with the wages, say the administration." " Mat- 
ty's policy, fifty cents a day and French soup ; 
our policy, two dollars a day and roastbeef." 
Newspapers were full of advertisements like this : 
" The subscriber will pay $5 a hundred for pork 
if Harrison is ele(!ted, and #2.50 if Van Buren is." 
But the songs were most interesting. The ball, 
which Benton had said in his last speech on the 
expunging resolution that he '' solitary and alone " 
had put in motion, was a mine of similes. They 



sang: 



" With heart and soul 
This baU we roll." 



ELECTION OF 1840 389 

" As rolls the ball, 
Van's reig-n does fall, 
And he may look 
To Kinderhook." 

*' The gathering- ball is rolling still, 
And still gathering as it rolls." 

Harrison's battle with the Indians gave the ef- 
fective cry of " Tippecanoe and T^der too." And 
so they sang : 

" Farewell, dear Van, 
You 're not our man ; 
To guard the ship, 
We '11 try old Tip." 

"With Tip and Tyler 
We '11 burst Van's biler." 

** Old Tip he wears a homespun suit. 
He has no ruffled shirt — wirt — wirt j 
But Mat he has the golden plate, 
And he 's a little squirt — wirt — wirt." 

When the election returns began to come from 
the August and September States, the joyful excite- 
ment passed all bounds. Then the new Whigs 
found a new Lilliburlero. To the tune of the 
" Little Pig's Tail " they sang : 

" What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion, 
Our country through ? 
It is the ball a-rolling on. 
For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, Tippecanoe and Tyler too! 

" And with them we '11 beat little Van, Van ; 

Van )s a used-up man. 
Oh, have you heard the news from Maine, Maine, Maine, 

All honest and true ? 
One thousand for Kent and seven thousand gain 

For Tippecanoe," etc. 



390 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

And then Joe Hoxie would close tlie meetings 
by singing '' Up Salt River." 

The result was pretty plain before November. 
New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and 
Virginia voted for state officers in the spring. All 
had voted for Van Buren in 1836 ; all now gave 
Whig majorities, except New Hampshire, where 
the Democratic majority was greatly reduced. In 
August North Carolina was added to the Whig 
column, though in Missouri and Illinois there was 
little change. But when in September Maine^ 
which had given Van Buren nearly eight thousand 
majority, and had since remained steadfast, " went 
hell-bent for Governor Kent" and gave a slight 
Whig majority, the administration's doom was 
sealed. 

Harrison received 234 electoral votes, and Van 
Buren 60. New York gave Harrison 13,300 votes 
more than Van Buren ; but a large part of this 
plurality, perhaps all, came from the counties on 
the northern and western borders. Only one 
Northern State, Illinois, voted for Van Buren. Of 
the slave States, five, Virginia, South Carolina, 
Alabama, Missouri, and Arkansas, were for Van 
Buren ; the other eight for Harrison. There was 
a popular majority in the slave States of about 
55,000 against Van Buren in a total vote of about 
695,000, and in the free States, of about 90,000 in 
a total vote of about 1,700,000, still showing, there- 
fore, his greater popular strength in the free States. 
The increase in the popular vote was the most 



DEFEAT 391 

extraordinary the country has ever known, proving 
the depth and universality of the feeling. This 
vote had been about 1,500,000 in 1836 ; it reached 
about 2,400,000 in 1840, an increase of 900,000, 
while from 1840 to the Clay canvass of 1844 it 
increased only 300,000. Van Buren, as a defeated 
candidate in 1840, received about 350,000 votes 
more than elected him in 1836 ; and the growth of 
population in the four years was probably less, not 
greater, than usual. There were cries of " fraud 
and corruption " because of this enormously in- 
creased vote, cries which Benton long afterwards 
seriously heeded ; but there seems to be no good 
reason to treat them otherwise than as one of the 
many expressions of Democratic anguish. 

Van Buren received the seemingly crushing de- 
feat with dignity and composure. While the crie^ 
of "Van, Van, he 's a used-up man," were coming 
with some of the sting of truth through the White 
House windows, he prepared the final message with 
which he met Congress in December, 1840. The 
year, he said, had been one of " health, plenty, 
and peace." Again he declared the dangers of a 
national debt, and the equal dangers of too much 
money in the treasury ; for " practical economy in 
the management of public affairs," he said, " can 
have no adverse influence to contend with more 
powerful than a large surplus revenue." Again 
he attacked the national bank scheme. During 
four years of the greatest pecuniary embarrass- 
i/ients ever known in time of peace, with a decreas* 



392 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ing public revenue, with a formidable opposition, 
his administration had been able punctually to meet 
every obligation without a bank, without a perma- 
nent national debt, and without incurring any 
liability which the ordinary resources of the gov- 
ernment would not speedily discharge. If the 
public service had been thus independently sus- 
tained without either of these fruitful sources of 
discord, had we not a right to expect that this 
policy would '' receive the final sanction of a people 
whose unbiased and fairly elicited judgment upon 
public affairs is never ultimately wrong ? " Again 
with a clear emphasis he declared against any at- 
tempt of the government to repair private losses 
sustained in private business, either by direct ap- 
propriations or by legislation designed to secure 
exclusive privileges to individuals or classes. In 
the very last words of this, his last message, he 
gave an account of his efforts to suppress the slave 
trade, and to prevent " the prostitution of the 
American flag to this inhuman purpose," asking 
Congress, by a prohibition of the American trade 
which took supplies to the slave factories on the 
African coast, to break up " those dens of ini- 
quity." 

The short session of Congress was hardly more 
than a jubilee of the AVhigs, happily ignorant of 
the complete chagrin and frustration of their hopes 
which a few months would bring. Some new bank 
suspensions occurred in Philadelpliia, and among 
banks closely connected with that city. The Bank 



DEFEAT 393 

of the United States, after a resumption for twenty 
days, succumbed amid its own loud protestations 
of solvency, its final disgrace and ruin being, how- 
ever, deferred a little longer. 

Van Buren's cabinet had somewhat chan2:ed 
since his inauguration. In 1838 his old friend 
and ally, and one of the chie-f champions of his 
policy, Benjamin F. Butler, resigned the office of 
attorney-general, but without any break political 
or personal, as was seen in his fine and arduous 
labors in the canvass of 1840 and in the Democra- 
tic convention of 1844. Felix Grundy of Ten- 
nessee then held the place until late in 1839, when 
he resigned. Van Buren offered it, though with- 
out much heartiness, to James Buchanan, who pre- 
ferred, however, to retain his seat in the Senate ; 
and Henry D. Gilpin, another Pennsylvanian, was 
appointed. Amos Kendall's enormous industry 
and singular equipment of doctrinaire convictions, 
narrow prejudices, executive ahilit}^, and practical 
political skill and craft, were lost to the adminis- 
tration through the failure of his health in the 
midst of the campaign of 1840. In an address to 
the public he gave a curious proof that for hi in 
work was more wearing in public than in private 
service. He stated that as he was poor he should 
resort to private employment suitable to his health ; 
and that he proposed, therefore, during the canvass 
to write for the " Globe " in defense of the Presi- 
dent, in whose integrity, principles, and firmness his 
confidence, he said, had increased. In 1838, when 



394 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

his health had threatened to be unequal to his 
work, Van Buren had offered him the mission to 
Spain, if it should become vacant. John M. Niles, 
formerly a Democratic senator from Connecticut, 
took Kendall's place in the post-office. 

Van Buren welcomed Harrison to the White 
House, and before the inauguration entertained 
him there as a guest, with the easy and dignified 
courtesy so natural to him, and in marked contrast 
to the absence of social amenities on either side at 
the great change twelve years before. Under Van 
Buren indeed the executive mansion was adminis- 
tered with elevated grace. There was about it, 
while he was its master, the unostentatious ele- 
gance suited to the dwelling of the chief magis- 
trate of the great republic. There were many 
ilings at him for his great economy, and what was 
ealled his parsimony ; but he was accused as well 
of undemocratic luxury. The talk seemed never 
to end over the gold spoons. The contradictory 
charges point out the truth. Van Buren was an 
eminently prudent man. He did not indulge in 
the careless and useless waste which impoverished 
Jefferson and Jackson. By sensible and honorable 
economy he is said to have saved one half of the 
salary of §25,000 a year then paid to the Presi- 
dent.^ Returning to private life, he was spared the 
humiliation of pecuniary trouble, which had dis- 

1 It should be remembered that several great expenses of the 
White House were then and are now met by special and additional 
appropriations. 



DEFEAT 395 

tressed three at least of his predecessors. But 
with his exquisite sense of propriety, he had uot 
failed to order the White House with fitting de- 
corum and a modest state. His son Abraham 
Van Buren was his private secretary ; and after 
the latter's marriage, in November, 1838, to Miss 
Singleton of South Carolina, a niece of Andrew 
Stevenson, and a relation of Mrs. Madison, he and 
his wife formed the presidential famil}'. In 1841 
they accompanied the ex-President to his retire- 
ment at Llndenwald. 

Under Andrew Jackson the social air of the 
White House had suffered from his ill-health and 
the bitterness of his parti sanshij) ; and in this re- 
spect the change to his successor was most pleas- 
ing. Van Buren used an agreeable tact with even 
his strongest opponents ; and about his levees and 
receptions there were a charm and a grace by no 
means usual in the dwellings of American public 
men. He had, we are told in the Kecollections of 
Sargent, a political adversary of his, " the high 
art of blending dignity with ease and gravity." 
He introduced the custom of dining with the heads 
of departments and foreign ministers, although 
with that exception he observed the etiquette of 
never being the guest of others at Washington. 
Judge Story mentions the '' splendid dinner " given 
by the President to the judges in Januarj^ 1839. 

John Quincy Adams's diary bears unintended 
testimony to Van Buren's admirable personal bear- 
mg in office. From the time he reached Washing- 



396 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ton as secretary of state, he had treated Adams in 
his defeat with marked distinction and deference, 
which Adams, as he records, accepted in his own 
house, in the Wiiite House, and elsewhere. At a 
social party the President, he said, " was, as usual, 
courteous to all, and particularly to me." Van 
Buren had therefore every reason to suppose that 
there was between himself and Adams a not un- 
frie ndly personal esteem. But Adams, in his churl- 
ish, bitter temper, apparently found in these wise 
and generous civilities only evidence of a mean 
sp'iit. After one visit at the White House during 
the height of the crisis of 1837, he recorded that 
h\^ "^bund Van Buren looking, not wretched, as he 
haa been told, but composed and tranquil. Return- 
ing nome from this observation of the President's 
" calmness, his gentleness of manner, his easy and 
conciliatory temper," this often unmannerly pen 
described besides "his obsequiousness, his syco- 
phancy, his profound dissimulation and duplicity, 
. . . his fawning civility." In a passage which 
was remarkable in that time of political bitterness 
so largely personal. Clay said, in his parliamentarv^ 
duel with Calhoun, after the latter rejoined the 
Democratic party, that he remembered Calhoun 
attributing to the President the qualities of '^ the 
most crafty, most skulking, and the meanest of the 
quadruped tribe." Saying that he had not shared 
Calhoun's opinion, he then added of Van Buren: — 

" I have always found him in his manner and dejiort- 
noent. civil, courteous, and gentlemanly ; and he dis« 



DEFEAT 397 

penses in the noble mansion which he now occupies, 
one worthy the residence of the chief magistrate of a 
great peoj)le, a generous and liberal hospitality. An 
acquaintance with him of more than twenty years' dura- 
tion has inspired me with a respect for the man, al- 
though I regret to be comoelied to say, I detest tii© 
magistrate." 



CHAPTER XI 

EX-PRESIDENT. SLAVERY. — TEXAS ANNEXATION. 

DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH. FREE-SOIL CAM- 
PAIGN. — LAST YEARS 

Van Buren loitered at Washington a few days 
after his presidency was over, and on his way home 
stopped at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York. 
At New York he was finely welcomed. Amid 
great crowds he was taken to the City Hall in a 
procession headed by Captain Brown's corps of 
dancers and a body of armed firemen. He reached 
Kinderhook on May 15, 1841, there to make his 
home until his death. He had, after the seemly 
and pleasing fashion of many men in American 
public life, lately purchased, near this village 
among the hills of Columbia county, the residence 
of William P. Van Ness, where Irving had thirty 
years before lived in seclusion after the death of 
his betrothed, and had put the last touches to his 
Knickerbocker. It was an old estate, whose lands 
had been rented for twenty years and under culti- 
vation for a hundred and sixty, and from which 
Van Buren now managed to secure a profit. To 
this seat he gave the name of Linden wald, a name 
which in secret he probably hoped the American 



EX-PRESIDENT 399 

people would come to group with Monticello, Mont- 
pellier, and the Hermitage. But this could not be. 
Van Buren had served but half the presidential 
term of honor. He was not a sage, but still a can- 
didate for the presidency. Before the electoral 
votes were counted in 1841, Benton declared for 
his renomination in 1844 : and until the latter 
year he again held the interesting and powerful 
but critical place of the probable candidate of his 
party for the presidency. He remained easily the 
chief fio'ure in the Democratic ranks. His defeat 
had not taken from him that honor which is the 
property of the statesman standing for a cause 
whose righteousness and promise belong to the 
assured future. His defeat signified no personal, 
<\o political fault. It had come to him from a wide- 
T>pread convulsion for which, perhaps less than any 
great American of his time, he was responsible. 
His party could not abandon its battle for a limited 
and non-paternal government and against the use 
of public moneys by private persons. It could 
not therefore abandon him ; for more than any 
other man who had not now finally retired he 
represented these causes in his own person. But 
his easy composure of manner did not altogether 
hide that eating and restless anxiety which so often 
attends the supreme ambition of the American. 

Two days after leaving the White House, Van 
Buren said, in reply to complimentary resolutions 
of the legislature of Missouri, that he did not ut- 
terly lament the bitter attacks upon him ; for expe- 



400 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

rience had taught him that few political men were 
praised by their foes until they were aboui: aban- 
doning their friends. With a pleasing frankness he 
admitted that to be worthy of the presidency and 
to reach it had been the object of his " most earnest 
desire ; " but he said that the selection of the next 
Democi-atic candidate must be decided by its pro- 
bable effect upon the principles for which they had 
just fought, and not upon any supposition that he 
had been wounded or embittered by his defeat 
in their defense. His description of a candidate 
meant himself, however, and rightly enough. In 
November, 1841, he wrote of the " apparent suc- 
cess of last year's buffoonery;" and intimated 
that, though he would take no step to be a candi- 
date, it was not true that he had said he should 
decline a nomination. 

Early in 1842, the ex-President made a trip 
through the South, in company with James K. 
Paulding, visiting on his return Clay at Ashland, 
and Jackson at the Hermitage. He was one of 
the very few men on personally friendly terms with 
both those long-time enemies. At Ashland, doubt- 
less, Texas was talked over, even if a bargain were 
not made, as has been fancied, that Clay and Van 
Buren should remove the troublesome question from 
politics. In a fashion very different from that of 
modern candidates, he now wrote, from time to 
time, able, long, and explicit, but somewhat tedious 
letters on political questions. In one of them he 
touched protection more clearly than ever before. 



EX-PRESIDENT 401 

He favored, he said in February, 1843, a tariff for 
revenue only ; the " incidental protection " which 
that must give many American manufacturers was 
all the protection which should be permitted ; the 
mechanics and laborers had been the chief sufferers 
from a "high protective tariff." He was at last 
and definitely " a low tariff man." He declared 
that he should support the Democratic candidate 
of 1844 ; for he believed it to be impossible that a 
selection from that source should not accord with 
his views. He did not perhaps realize to how 
extreme a test his sincerity would be put. He 
added words which four years later read strangely 
enough. " My name and pretensions," he said, 
" however subordinate in importance, shall never 
be at the disposal of any person whatever, for the 
purpose of creating distractions or divisions in the 
Democratic party." 

The party was indeed known as the " Van Buren 
party " until 1844, so nearly universal was the 
supposition that he was to be renominated, and so 
plainly was he its leader. The disasters which 
had now overtaken the Whigs made his return to 
power seem probable enough. The utterly incon- 
gruous elements held together during the sharp 
discontent and wonderful but inarticulate enthusi= 
asm of 1840 had quickly fallen apart. While on 
his way to Kinderhook Van Buren was the chief 
figure in the obsequies at New York of his success- 
ful competitor. This honest man, of whom John 
Quincy Adams said, with his usual savage exagget 



402 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ration, that his dull sayings were repeated for wit 
and his grave inanity passed off for wisdom, had 
already quarreled with the splendid leader whose 
place he was too conscious of r»surping. Tyler's 
accession was the first, but not the last illustration, 
which American politicians have had of the danger 
of securing the presidency by an award of the 
second place to a known opponent of the principles 
whose success they seek. Tyler had not before his 
nomination concealed his narrow and Democratic 
views of government. The Whigs had ostenta- 
tiously refused to declare any principles when they 
nominated him. In technical conscientiousness he 
marched with a step by no means cowardly to un- 
honored political isolation, as a quarter of a century 
later marclied another vice-president nominated b;v 
a party in whose ranks he too was a new recruit. 

Upon Tyler's veto of the bill for a national bank. 
an outcry of agony went up from the Whigs ; the 
whole cabinet, except Webster, resigned; a new 
cabinet was formed, partly from the Conservatives ; 
and by 1844, Tyler was a forlorn candidate for the 
Democratic nomination, which he claimed for his 
support of the annexation of Texas. 

Upon this first of the great pro-slavery move= 
ments Van Buren was defeated for the Democratic 
nomination in 1844, although it seemed assured to 
him by every consideration of party loyalty, obliga- 
tion, and wise foresight. The relations of govern- 
ment to private business ceased to be the dominant 
political question a few months and only a few 



EX-PRESIDENT 403 

months too soon to enable Van Buren to complete 
his eight years. Slavery arose in place of economics. 
No mistake is more common in the review of 
American history than to suppose that slavery was 
an active or definite force in organized American 
politics after the Missouri Compromise and before 
the struofo'le for the annexation of Texas undcT* 
Tyler's administration. The appeals of the aboli^ 
tionists to the simpler and deeper feelings of hu ■ 
manity were indeed at work before 1835 ; and. 
from that year on they were profoundly stirring 
the American conscience and storing up tremen 
dous moral energy. But slavery was not in parti 
san politics. In 1836 and 1840 there was upon 
slavery no real difference between the utterances 
of the candidates and other leaders, Whig and 
Democratic, whether North or South. Yan Buren 
was supported by many abolitionists ; the pro- 
foundest distrust of him was at the South. Upon 
no question touching slavery with which the presi- 
dent could have concern, did his opinions or his ut- 
terances differ from those of John Quincy Adams. 
Clay said in November, 1838, that the abolitionists 
denounced him as a slaveholder and the slavehold- 
ers denounced him as an abolitionist, while both 
united on Van Buren. The charge of truckling 
to the South, traditionally made against Van Buren, 
is justified by no utterance or act different from 
those made by all American public men of distinc- 
tion at the time, except perhaps in two instances, — 
his vote as vice-president for Kendall's bill against 



404 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

sending inflammatory abolition circulars through 
the post-office to States which prohibited their cir- 
culation, and his approval of the rules in the Senate 
and House for tabling or refusing abolition peti- 
tions without reading them. But neither of these, 
as has been shown, was a decisive test. In the 
first case he met a political trick ; and for his vote 
there was justly much to be said on the reason of 
the thing, apart from Southern wishes. As late as 
1848, AVebster, in criticising Van Buren's incon- 
sistency, would say no more of the law than that 
it was one " of very doubtful propriety ; " and de= 
clared that he himself should agree to legislation 
by Congress to protect the South " from incite- 
ments to insurrection." In the second case Van 
Buren's position in public life might of itself prop- 
erly restrain him from acquiescing in an agitation 
in Congress for measures which, with all responsi- 
ble public men, Adams included, he believed Con- 
gress ought not to pass. 

The Democratic convention was to meet in May^ 
1844. The delegates had been very generally in- 
structed for Van Buren ; and two months before 
it assembled his nomination seemed beyond doubt. 
But the slave States were now fired with a bar- 
barous enthusiasm to extend slavery by annex- 
ing Texas. To this Van Buren w'as supposed to 
be hostile. His Southern opponents, in February, 
1843, skillfully procured from Jackson, innocent of 
the plan, a strong letter in favor of the annexation, 
to be used, it was said, just before the convention, 



DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH 405 

« to blow Van out of water." The letter was first 
published in March, 1844. Van Buren was at 
once put to a crucial test. His administration had 
been adverse to annexation ; his opinion was still 
adverse. But a large, and not improbably a con- 
trolling section of his party, aided by Jackson's 
wonderful prestige, deemed it the most important 
of political causes. Van Buren was, according to 
the plan, explicitly asked by a Southern delegate 
to state, with distinct reference to the action of 
the convention, what were his opinions. 

The ex-President deeply desired the nomination ; 
and the nomination seemed conditioned upon his 
surrender. It was at least assured if lie now gave 
no olfense to the South, But he did not flinch. 
He resoi-ted to no safe generalizations. His views 
upon the annexation were, he admitted, different 
from those of many friends, political and perso- 
nal ; but in 1837 his administration after a careful 
consideration had decided against annexation of the 
State whose independence had lately been recog- 
nized by the United States ; the situation had not 
changed ; immediate annexation would place a wea- 
pon in the hands of those who looked upon Ameri*- 
cans and American institutions with distrustful and 
envious eyes, and would do us far more real and 
lasting injury than the new territory, however val- 
uable, could repair. He intimated that there was 
jobbery in some of the enthusiasm for the annex- 
ation. The argument that England might acquire 
Texas was without force ; when England sought 



406 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

in Texas more than the usual commercial favors, it 
would be time for the United States to interfere. 
He was aware, he said, of the hazard to which he 
exposed his standing with his Southern fellow-citi- 
zens, " of whom it was ajDtly and appropriately 
said by one of their own number that ' they are the 
children of the sun and partake of its warmth.' " 
But whether we stand or fall, he said, it is always 
true wisdom as well as true morality to hold fast 
to the truth. If to nourish enthusiasm were one of 
the effects of a genial climate, it seldom failed to 
give birth to a chivalrous spirit. To preserve our 
national escutcheon untarnished had always been 
the unceasing solicitude of Southern statesmen. 
The only tempering he gave his refusal was to say 
that if, after the subject had been fully discussed, 
a Congress chosen with reference to the question 
showed the popular will to favor it, he would yield.^ 

1 I must again complain of the curious though unintended un- 
fairness of Professor Von Hoist {Const. Hist, of the U. S. 1828- 
1846, Chicago, 1879, p. 603). He treats this letter with great 
contempt. He assumes indeed that Van Buren's declaration 
for annexation would have given him the nomination ; and admits 
that Van Buren declared himself ''decidedly opposed to annexa- 
tion." After this sufficient proof of courage, for Van Buren 
could at least have simply promised to adopt the vote of Congress 
on the main question, it was not very sensible to declare '' disgust- 
ing " Van Buren's efforts '"to creep through the thorny hedge 
which shut him off from the party nomination." Professor Von 
Hoist's " disgust " seems particularly directed against the pas- 
sage here annotated where, after his strong argument against 
annexation, he declared that he would not be influenced by sec- 
tional feeling, and would obey the wishes of a Congress chosen 
with reference to the question. Few, I think, will consider this 



DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH 40'i 

Van Buren thus closed his letter : " Nor can I in 
any extremity be induced to cast a shade over 
the motives of my past life, by changes or conceal- 
ments of opinions maturely formed upon a great 
national question, for the unworthy purpose of in- 
creasing my chances for political promotion." 

To a presidential candidate the eve of a national 
convention is dim with the self-deceiving twilight 
of sophistry ; and the twilight deepens when a ques- 
tion is put upon which there is a division among 
those who are, or who may be, his supporters. He 
can keep silence, he can procure the questioning 
friend to withdraw the troublesome inquiry ; he 
can ignore the question from an enemy ; he can 
affect an enigmatical dignity. Van Buren did 
neither of these. His Texas letter was one of the 
finest and bravest pieces of political courage, and 
deserves from Americans a long admiration. 

The danger of Van Buren's difference with Jack- 
son it was sought to avert. Butler visited Jackson 
at the Hermitage, and doubtless showed him for 
what a sinister end he had been used. Jackson 
did not withdraw his approval of annexation ; but 
publicly declared his regard for Van Buren to be 
so great, his confidence in Van Buren's love of 
country to be so strengthened by long intimacy, 
that no difference about Texas could change his 

promise with reference to such a question, either cowardly or 
*'disgusting'," made, as it was, by a candidate for the presidency, 
of a democratic republic, after clearly and firmly declaring his 
own views in advance of the cong^rcssioual elections. 



408 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

opinions. Van Buren's nomination was again 
widely supposed to be assured. But the work of 
Calhoun and Robert J. Walker had been too well 
done. The convention met at Baltimore on May 
27, 1844. George Bancroft headed the delegation 
from Massachusetts. Before the Rev. Dr. Johns 
had " fervently addressed the Throne of Grace " 
or the Rev. Mr. McJilton had " read a scrip- 
ture lesson," the real contest took place over the 
adoption of the rule requiring a two thirds vote 
for a nomination. For it was through this rule 
that enough Southern members, chosen before Van 
Bui-en's letter as they had been, were to escape 
obedience to tlieir instructions to vote for him. 
Robert J. Walker, then a senator from Mississippi, 
a man of interesting history and large ability, led 
the Southerners. He quoted the precedent of 1832, 
when Van Buren had been nominated for the vice- 
presidency under the two thirds rule, and that of 
1835, when he had been nominated for the presi- 
dency. These nominations had led to victory. In 
1840 the rule had not been adopted. Without 
this rule, he said amid angry excitement, the party 
would yield to those whose motto seemed to be 
" rule or ruin." Butler, Daniel S. Dickinson, and 
Marcus Morton led the Northern ranks. Butler 
regretted that any member should condescend to 
the allusion to 1840. That year, he said, had been 
a debauchery of the nation's reason amid log cabins, 
hard cider, and coon-skins ; and in an ecstasy of 
painful excitement at the recollection and amid a 



DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH 409 

tremendous burst of applause " he leaped from the 
floor and stamped ... as if treading beneath his 
feet the object of his loathing." The true Demo- 
cratic rule, he continued, required the minority to 
submit to the majority. Morton said that under 
the majority rule Jefferson had been nominated ; 
that rule had governed state, county, and township 
conventions. Butler admitted that under the rule 
Van Buren would not be nominated, although a 
majority of the convention was known to be foi 
him. In 1832 and 1835 the two thirds rule had 
prevailed because it was certainly known who would 
be nominated ; and the rule operated to aid not to 
defeat the majority. If the rule were adopted, it 
would be by the votes of States which were not 
Democratic, and would bring ^' dismemberment and 
final breaking up of the party." Walker laughed 
at Butler's " tall vaulting " from the floor ; and, 
refusing to shrink from the Van Buren issue, he 
protested against New York dictation, and warn- 
ingly said that, if Van Buren were nominated. 
Clay would be elected. After the convention had 
received with enthusiasm a floral gift from a Demo- 
cratic lady whom the President declared to be 
fairer than the flowers, the vote was taken. The 
two thirds rule was adopted by 148 to 118. All 
the negatives were Northerners, except 14 from 
Missouri, Maryland, and North Carolina. Fifty- 
eight true " Northern men with Southern princi- 
ples " joined ninety Southerners in the aflirmative. 
It was really a vote on Van Buren, — or rather 



410 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

upon the annexation of Texas, — or ratlier stil\ 
upon the extension of American slave territory. It 
was the first battie, a sort of Bull Run, in the last 
and great political campaign between the interests 
of slavery and those of freedom. 

On the first ballot for the candidate, Van Buren 
had 146 votes, 13 more than a majority. If after 
the vote on the two thirds rule anything more were 
required to show that some of these votes were 
given in mere formal obedience to instructions, the 
second ballot brought the proof. Van Buren then 
sank to 127, less than a majority ; and on the 
seventh ballot to 99. A motion was made to de- 
clare him the nominee as the choice of a majority 
of the convention ; and there followed a scene of 
fury, the President bawling for order amid savage 
taunts between North and South, and bitter de- 
nunciations of the treachery of some of those who 
had pledged themselves for Van Buren. Samuel 
Youup' of New York declared the " abominable 
Texas question " to be the fire-brand thrown among 
them by the ••' mongrel administration at Washing- 
ton," whose hero was now doubtless fiddling while 
Rome was burning. Nero seems to have been Cal- 
houn, though between the god-like young devil of 
antiquity wreathed with sensual frenzy and infamy, 
and the solemn, even saturnine figure of the great 
modern advocate of human slavery, the likeness 
seemed rather slight. The motion was declared 
out of order ; and the name of James K. Polk was 
presented as that of " a pure whole-hogged Demo- 



DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH 411 

crat." On tlie eighth ballot he had 44 votes. Then 
followed the magnanimous scene of " union and 
harmony " which has so often, after a conflict, 
charmed a political body into unworthy surrender. 
The cfreat delegation from New York retired during; 
the ninth balloting ; and returned to a convention 
profoundly silent but thrilling with that bastard 
sense of coming glory in which a lately tumultuous 
and quarreling body waits the solution of its diffi- 
culties already known to be reached but not yet 
declared. Butler quoted a letter which Van Buren 
had given him authorizing the withdrawal of his 
name if it were necessary for harmony ; he eulo- 
gized Polk as a strict constructionist, and closed 
by reading a letter from Jackson fervently urging 
Van Bnren's nomination. Daniel S. Dickinson 
said that ''he loved this convention because it had 
acted so like the masses," and cast New York's 35 
votes for Polk. The latter's nomination was de- 
clared with the utmost joy, and sent to Washing- 
ton over Morse's first telegraph line, just completed. 
Silas Wright of New York, Van Buren's strong 
friend and a known opponent of annexation, was, 
in the fashion since followed, nominated for the 
vice-presidency, to soothe the feelings and the con- 
science of the defeated, Wright peremptorily tele- 
graphed his refusal. He told his friends that he 
did "not choose to ride behind on the black pony." 
George M. Dallas of Pennsylvania took his place. 

The Democratic party now threw away all 
advantage of the issue made by the undeserved 



412 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

defeat four years before. Thirty-six years later it 
repeated the bhinder in discarding Van Buren's 
famous neighbor and disciple. Polk's was the 
first nomination by the party of a man of the 
second or of even a lower rank. Polk was known 
to have ability inferior not onl}^ to that of Van 
Baren and Calhoun, but to Cass, Buchanan, 
Wright, and others. He was the first presiden- 
tial " dark horse," and indeed hardly that. His 
own State of Tennessee had, by resolution, pre- 
sented him as its choice for vice-2:)resident with 
Van Buren in the first place. He had been 
speaker of the national House, and later, governor 
of his State ; but since holding these places had 
been twice defeated for governor. In accepting 
the nomination he declared, with an apparent 
fling at Van Buren, that, if elected, he should not 
accept a renomination, and should thus enable the 
party in 1848 to make " a free selection." 

The nomination aroused disgust enough. '" Polk ! 
Great God, what a nomination ! " Letcher, the 
Whig governor of Kentucky, wrote to Buchanan . 
But the experiment of 1840 with the Whigs had 
been disastrous ; the people had swung back to 
the strict doctrines of the Democracy. Van Bu- 
ren faithfully kept his promise to support the 
nomination ; under his urgency Wright finally ac- 
cepted the nomination for governor of New York. 
And by the vote of New York Henry Clay was 
defeated by a man vastly his inferior. Polk had 
5000 plurality in that State ; but A\' right had 



DEFEAT BY THE SOUTH 413 

I0,d00, Had not James G. Birney, the aboli- 
tionist candidate who polled there 15,812 votes, 
been in the field, not even Van Buren's party 
loyalty would have prevented Clay's election. 
Van Buren's friends saved the State ; but in do- 
ing so voted for annexation. In April, 1844, 
Ciay had written a letter against annexation. As 
it appeared within a few days of Van Buren's 
letter, and as the personal relations between the 
two great party leaders were most friendly, some 
have inferred an arrangement between them to 
take the question out of politics. This would in- 
deed have been an extraordinary occurrence. One 
might well wish to have overheard a negotiation 
between two rivals for the presidency to exclude 
a great question distasteful to both. After the 
Democratic convention, Tyler's treaty of annexa- 
tion was rejected in the Senate by 35 to 16, six 
Democrats from the North, among them Wright 
of New York .and Benton of Missouri, voting 
against it. During the campaign Clay had 
weakly abandoned even the mild emphasis of his 
first opposition, and by flings at the abolitionists 
had openly bid for the pro-slavery vote ; thus per- 
haps losing enough votes in New York to Birney 
to defeat him. After the election the current for 
annexation seemed too strong ; and a resolution 
passed both Houses authorizing the admission of 
Texas as a State. The resolution provided for the 
formation of four additional States out of Texas. 
In any such additional State formed north of the 



114 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Missouri compromise line, slavery was to be pro* 
hibited ; but in those south of it slavery was to be 
permitted or prohibited as the inhabitants might 
choose. 

Slavery was now clearly before the political 
conscience of the nation. Van Buren was the 
conspicuous victim of the first encounter. The 
Baltimcre convention had in its platform compli- 
mented " their illustrious fellow-citizen," " his in- 
flexible fidelity to the Constitution," his " ability, 
integrity, and firmness," and had tendered to him, 
" in honorable retirement," the assurance of the 
deeply-seated "confidence, affection, and respect 
of the American Democracy." This sentence to 
" honorable retirement " Van Buren, who was 
only in his sixty-second year and in the amplitude 
of his natural powers, received with outward com- 
placency. On the eve of the election he pointed 
out, probably referring to Cass, that the hostility 
to him had not been in the interest of Polk, and 
warmly said that, unless the Democratic creed 
were a delusion, personal feelings ought to be 
turned to nothing. Van Buren was, however, 
profoundly affected by what he deemed the unde- 
served Southern hostility to himself. For he hardly 
yet appreciated that his defeat was politically legit- 
imate, and not the result of political treachery or 
envy. Between him and the Southern politicians 
had opened a true and deep division over the 
greatest single question in American politics since 
Jv^.fferson's election. 



SLAVERY IN POLITICS 415 

With Polk's accession and the Mexican war, 
the schism in the Democratic ranks ovei the exten- 
sion of American slave territory became plainer. 
Even during the canvass of 1844 a circular had 
been issued by William Cullen Bryant, David 
Dudley Field, John W. Edmonds, and other Van 
Buren men, supporting Polk, but urging the choice 
of congressmen opposed to annexation. Early in 
the new administration the division of New York 
Democrats into " Barnburners " and '' Old Hunk- 
ers " appeared. The former were the strong pro- 
Vaia Buren, anti-Texas men, or " radical Demo- 
crats," who were likened to the farmer who burned 
his barn to clear it of rats. The latter were the 
" Northern men with Southern principles," the 
supporters of annexation, and the respectable, dull 
men of easy consciences, who were said to hanker 
after the offices. The Barnburners were led by 
men of really eminent ability and exalted charac- 
ter : Silas Wright, then governor, Benjamin F. 
Butler, John A. Dix, chosen in 1845 to the United 
States Senate, Azariah C. Flagg, the famous comp- 
troller, and John Van Buren, the ex-President's 
son, and a singularly picturesque figure in politics, 
who was, in 1845, made attorney-general by the 
legislature. He had been familiarly called " Prince 
John " since his travels abroad during his father's 
presidency. Daniel S. Dickinson and William L. 
Marcy were the chief figures in the Hunker ranks, 
Polk seemed inclined, at the beginning, to favor 
or at least to placate, the Barnburners. He offered 



416 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

the Treasury to Wright, though he is said to have 
known that Wright coukl not leave the governor- 
ship. He offered Butler the War Department, but 
the latter's devotion to his profession, for which he 
had resigned the attorney-generars place in Van 
Buren's cabinet, made him prefer the freedom of 
the United States attorneyship at New York, and 
Marcy was finally given the New York place 
in the cabinet. Jackson's death in June, 1845, 
deprived the Van Buren men of the tremendous 
moral weioht which his name carried, and which 
might have daunted Polk. It perhaps also helped 
to loosen the weight of party ties on the Van Bu- 
ren men. After this the schism rapidly grew. In 
the fall election of 1845 the Barnburners pretty 
thoroughly controlled the Democratic party of the 
State in hostility to the Mexican war, which the 
annexation of Texas had now brought. Samuel J. 
Tilden of Columbia county, and a profound ad- 
mirer of Van Buren, became one of their younger 
leaders. 

Now arose the strife over the *' Wilmot Proviso," 
in which was embodied the opposition to the ex- 
tension of slavery into new Territories. Upon this 
proviso the modern Republican party was formed 
eight years later; upon it, fourteen years later, 
Abraham Lincoln was chosen president ; and upon 
it began the war for the Union, out of whose throes 
cam-e the vastly grander and unsought beneficence 
of complete emancipation. David Wilmot was a 
Democratic member of Congress from Pennsyl- 



THE BARNBURNERS 417 

vania -, in New York he would have been i\. Barn- 
burner. In 184G a bill was pending to appropriate 
12,000,000 for use by the President in a purchase 
of territory from Mexico as part of a peace. Wil- 
•iiiot proposed an amendment that slavery should 
be excluded from any territory so acquired. All 
the Democratic members, as well as the Whigs 
from Xew York, and most strongly the Van Buren 
or Wright men, supported the proviso. The Dem- 
ocratic legislature approved it by the votes of the 
Whio's with the Barnburners and the Soft Hunk- 
ers, the latter being Hunkers less friendly to sla- 
very. It passed the House at Washington, but 
was rejected by the Senate, not so quickly open to 
popular sentiment. In the Democratic convention 
of New York, in October, 1846, the " war for the 
extension of slavery" was charged by the Barn- 
burners on the Hunkers. The former were vic- 
torious, and Silas Wright was renominated for 
governor, to be defeated, however, at the election. 
Polk, Marcy, and Dickinson, angered at the Demo- 
cratic opposition in New York to the pro-slavery 
Mexican policy, now threw all the weight of fed- 
eral patronage against the Barnburners, many of 
whom believed the administration to have been 
responsible for Wright's defeat. Van Buren and 
his influence were completely separated from the 
national administration. Just before the adjourn- 
ment of Congress in 1847, the appropriation to 
secure territory from Mexico was again proposed. 
Again the Wilmot Proviso was added in the 



418 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

House ; again it was rejected in the Senate, to the 
defeat of the appropriation ; and again Barnburn- 
ers and Wliigs carried in the New York legislature 
a resolution approving it, and directing the New 
York senators to support it. 

The tide was rising. It seemed that Mexican 
law prohibited slavery in New Mexico and Cali- 
fornia, and that upon their cession the principles 
of international law would preserve their condition 
of freedom. Benton, therefore, deemed the AVil- 
mot Proviso unnecessary ; a " thing of nothing in 
itself, and seized upon to conflagrate the States 
and dissolve the Union." For the Supreme Court 
had not then pronounced slavery a necessary ac- 
companiment of American supremacy. But the 
legal protection of freedom was practically unsub- 
stantial, even if not technical ; there could be no 
doubt of the determination of the South to carry 
slavery into these Territories, whatever might be 
the obligations of either municipal or international 
law ; and their conquest, therefore, made imminent 
a decision of the vital question whether slavery 
should be still further extended. 

At the Democratic convention at Syracuse, in 
September, 1847, the Hunkers, after a fierce strug- 
gle over contested seats, seized control of the body. 
David Dudley Field, for the Barnburners, pro- 
posed a resolution that, although the Democracy 
of New York would faithfully adhere to the com- 
promises of the Constitution and maintain the re- 
served rights of the States, they would still declare, 



THE BARNBURNERS 419 

since the crisis had come, " their uncompromising 
hostility to the extension of slavery into territory 
now free." This was defeated. The Barnburners 
then seceded, and issued an address, in which 
Lawrence Yan Buren, the ex-President's brother, 
joined. They protested that the anti-slavery reso= 
lution had been defeated by a fraudulent organiza- 
tion of the convention, and called a mass meeting at 
Herkimer, on October 26, " to avow their principles 
and consult as to future action." The Herkimer 
convention was really an important preliminary to 
the formation of the modern Republican party. 
It was a o-atherino- of the ex-President's friends. 
Cambreleng, his oil associate, presided ; David 
Wilmot addressed tlie nieetini»- ; and John Van 
Buren, now very conspicuous in politics, reported 
the resohitlons. In these the fraud at Syracuse 
was again denounced ; a convention was called for 
Washington's birthday in 1848, to choose Barn- 
burner delegates to contest the seats of those 
chosen by the Hunkers in the national Democratic 
convention. It was declared that the freemen of 
New York would not submit to slavery in the con- 
quered provinces ; and that, against the threat of 
Democrats at the South that they would support 
no candidate for the presidency who did not assent 
to tiie extension of slavery, the Democrats of New 
York would proclaim their determination to vote 
for no candidate who did so assent. 

It was clear that Van Buren sympathized with 
ail this. Relieved from the constraint of power, 



420 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

there strongly revived his old hostility to slavery; 
he recalled his vote twenty-eight years before 
against admitting Missouri otherwise than free. 
He now perceived how profound had really been 
the political division between him and the South- 
ern Democrats when, in 1844, he wrote his Texas 
letter. lonorina" the leoitimate character of the 
politics of Polk's administration in denying official 
recognition or reward to Barnburners, — legitimate 
if, as Van Buren had himself pretty uniformly 
maintained, patronage should go to friends rather 
than enemies, and if, as was obvious, there had 
arisen a true political division upon principles, — 
Van Buren was now touched with anger at the pro- 
scription of his friends. Excluded from the power 
which ouo'ht to have belonged to the chief of Dem- 
ocrats enjoying even in " honorable retirement " 
the " confidence, affection, and respect " of his 
party, independence rapidly grew less heinous in 
his eyes. One can hardly doubt that there now 
iQiore freely welled up in his mind, to clarify its 
vision, the sense of personal wrong which, since 
Polk's nomination, had been so long held in mag- 
nanimous and dignified restraint, — though of this 
he was probably unconscious. Van Buren was not 
insincere when, in October, 1847, he wrote from 
Lindenwald to an enthusiastic Democratic editor 
in Pennsylvania, who had hoisted his name to the 
top of his columns foi- 1848. Whatever, he said, 
had been his aspirations in the past, he now had 
no desire to be President ; every day confirmed 



THE BARNBURNERS 421 

him in the political opinions to which he had ad- 
hered. Conscious of always having done his duty 
to the people to the best of his ability, he had " no 
heart burnings to be allayed and no resentments to 
be gratified by a restoration of power." Life at 
Linden wald was entirely adapted to his taste ; and 
he was (so he wrote, and so doubtless he had forced 
himself to think) '' sincerely and heartily desirous 
to wear the honors and enjoyments of private life 
uninterruptedly to the end." If tendered a unan- 
imous Democratic support with the assurance of 
the election it would bring, he should not '' hesitate 
respectfully and gratefully, but decidedly to de- 
cline it," adding, however, the proviso so precious 
to public men, '' consulting only my own feelings 
?.nd wishes." It was in the last degree improbable, 
he said, — and so it was, — that any emergency- 
should arise in which this indulgence of his own 
preferences would, in the opinion of his true and 
faithful friends, conflict with his duty to the party 
to which his whole life had been devoted, and to 
which he owed any personal sacrifice. The Mexi- 
u3an war had, he said, been so completely sanctioned 
by the government that it must be carried through ; 
and, he ominously added, the propriety of there- 
after instituting inquiries into the necessity of its 
occurrence, so as to fix the just responsibility to 
public opinion of public servants, was then out of 
season. Not a word of praise did he speak of 
Polk's administration ; in this he was for once 
truly and grimly '' non-committal." 



422 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

In the New York canvass of 1847, the Barn- 
burners, after their secession, " talked of indifferent 
matters." The Whigs were therefore completely 
successful. In the legislature the Barnburners, or 
" Free-soilers " as they began to be called, out- 
numbered the Hunkers. Dickinson proposed in 
the Senate at Washington a resolution, the precur- 
sor of Douglas's "squatter sovereignty," — that 
all questions concerning the domestic policy of the 
Territories should be left to their legislatures to be 
chosen by their people. Lewis Cass, now the com- 
ing candidate of the South, asserted in December, 
1847, the same proposition, pointing out that, if 
Congress could abolish the relation of master and 
oervant in the Territories, it might in like manner 
went the relation of husband and wife. After 
Uiis ''Nicholson letter" of his, Cass might well 
have been asked whether he would have approved 
the admission of a State where the last relation 
was forbidden, and where concubinage existed as 
a "domestic institution." Dickinson's proposal 
meant that ih^ first settlers of each Territory should 
determine it to freedom or to slavery ; it meant 
that in admitting new States the nation ought to 
be indifferent to their laws on slavery. If slavery 
were a mere incident in the ix)lity of the State, a 
matter of taste or convenience, the proposition 
would have been true enough. But euphemistic 
talk about "domestic institutions" blinded none 
but theorists or lovers of slavery to the truth that 
slavery was a fearful and barbarous power, and 



THE FREE-SOIL PARTY 423 

that It must become paramount in any new South- 
ern State, monstrous and corrupting in its ten- 
dencies towards savagery, unyielding, wasteful, and 
ruinous, — a power whose corrujition and savagery, 
whose waste and ruin, debauched and enfeebled 
all communities closely allied to the States which 
maintained it, — a power in whose rapid growth, 
in whose affirmative and dictatorial arrogance, and 
in the intellectual ability and even the moral ex- 
cellences of the a-ristocracy which administered it 
at the South, there was an appalling menace. As 
well might one propose the admission to political 
intimacy and national unity of a State whose laws 
encouraged leprosy or required the funeral obla- 
tions of the suttee. If there were already slave 
States in the confederacy, it was no less true that 
the nation had profoundly suffered from their 
slavery, ^or could all the phrases of constitu- 
tional lawyers make the slave-block, the black laws, 
and all the practices of this barbarism mere local 
peculiarities, distasteful perhaps to the North but 
not concerning it, peculiarities to be ranked with 
laws of descent or judicial procedure. Cass and 
Dickinson for their surrender to the South were 
now called " dough-faces " and " slavocrats " by 
the Democratic Free-soilers. They were the true 
" Northern men with Southern principles." 

The Barnburners met at Utica on February 16, 
an earlier day than that first appointed, John Van 
Buren again being the chief figure. The conven- 
tion praised John A. Dix for supporting the AVil- 



424 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

mot Proviso ; and declared that Benton, a senator 
from a slave State, but now a sturdy opponent of 
extending the evil, and long the warm friend and 
admirer of Van Buren, had " won a proud preemi- 
nence among the statesmen of the day." Delegates 
were chosen to the national convention to oppose 
the Hunkers. In April, 1848, the Barnburner 
members of the legislature issued an address, the 
authors of which were long afterwards disclosed 
by Samuel J. Tilden to be himself and Martin and 
John Van Buren. At great length it demonstrated 
the Free-soil principles of the Democratic fathers. 

The national convention assembled in May, 
1848. It offered to admit the Barnburner and 
Hunker delegations together to cast the vote of 
the State. The Barnburners rejected the com- 
promise as a simple nullification of the vote of the 
State, and then withdrew. Lewis Cass was nomi- 
nated for president, the Wilmot Proviso being thus 
emphatically condemned. For Cass had declared 
in favor of letting the new Territories themselves 
decide upon slavery. The Barnburners, returning 
to a great meeting in the City Hall Park at New 
York, cried, '' The lash has resounded through the 
halls of the Capitol ! " and condemned the coward- 
ice of Northern senators who had voted with the 
South. Among the letters read was one from 
Franklin Pierce, who had in 1844 voted against 
annexation, a letter which years afterwards was, 
with a reference to his famous friend and biogra- 
pher, called the '' Scarlet Letter." The delegates 



THE FREE-SOIL PARTY 425 

issued an address written by Tilden, fearlessly 
calling Democrats to independent action. In June 
a Barnburner convention met at Utica. Its presi- 
dent, Samuel Young, who had refused at the con- 
vention at Baltimore in 1844 to vote for Polk 
when the rest of his delegation sun'endered, said 
that if the convention did its duty, a clap of po- 
litical thimder would in November "make the 
propagandists of slavery shake like Belshazzar." 
Butler, John Van Buren, and Preston King, after- 
wards a Republican senator, were there. David 
Dudley Field read an explicit declaration from the 
ex-President against the action and the candidates 
of the national convention. This letter, whose pro- 
lixity is an extreme illustration of Van Biu-en's 
literary fault, created a profound impression. He 
declared his '"' unchangeable determination never 
again to be a candidate for public office." The 
requirement by the national convention that the 
New York delegates should pledge themselves to 
vote for any candidate who might be nominated 
was, he said, an indignity of the rankest character. 
The Virginia delegates had been permitted, with- 
out incurrimr a threat of exclusion, to declare that 
they would not support a certain nominee. The 
convention had not allowed the Democrats of Ne\/ 
York fair representation, and its acts did not there- 
fore bind them. 

The point of political regularity, when discussed 
upon a technical basis, was, however, by no means 
clear. The real question was whether the surren- 



426 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

der of the power of Congress over the Territories, 
and the refusal to use that power to exclude sla- 
very, accorded with Democratic principles. On 
this Van Buren was most explicit. Jefferson had 
proposed freedom for the Northwest Territories ; 
and all the representatives from the slaveholding 
States had voted for the ordinance. Not only 
Washington and the elder and younger Adams 
had signed bills imposing freedom as the condition 
of admitting new Territories or States, but those 
undoubted Democrats, Jefferson, Madison, Mon- 
roe, and Jackson, had signed such bills ; and so 
iiad he himself in 1838 in the case of Iowa. This 
power of Congress was part of '' the compromises 
of the Constitution," compromises which, " deeply 
penetrated " as he had been " by the convictions 
that slavery was the only subject that could en- 
danger our blessed Union," he had, he was aware, 
gone further to sustain against Northern attacks 
than many of his best friends approved. He would 
go no further. As the national convention had 
rejected this old doctrine of the Democracy, he 
should not vote for its candidate. General Cass ; 
and if there were no other candidate but General 
Taylor, he should not vote for president. If our 
ancestors, when the opinion and conduct of the 
world about slavery were very different, had res- 
cued from slavery the territory now making five 
great States, should we, he asked, in these later 
days, after the gigantic efforts of Great Britain 
for freedom, and when nearly all mankind were 



THE FREE-SOIL PARTY 427 

convinced of its evils, doom to slavery a territory 
from which as many more new States might be 
made. He counseled moderation and forbearance, 
but still a firm resistance to injustice. 

This powerful declaration from the old chief of 
the Democracy was decisive with the convention. 
Van Buren was nominated for president, and 
Henry Dodge, a Democratic senator of Wisconsin, 
for vice - president. Dodge, however, declined, 
proud though he would be, as he said, to have his 
name under other circumstances associated with 
Van Buren's. But his State had been represented 
in the Baltimore convention ; and as one of its 
citizens he cordially concurred in the nomination 
of Cass. A national convention was called to 
meet at Buffalo on August 9, 1848. 

Charles Francis Adams, the son of John Quincy 
Adams, presided at the Buffalo convention ; and 
in it Joshua R. Giddings, the famous abolitionist, 
and Salmon P. Chase were conspicuous. To the 
unspeakable hori-or of every Hunker there partici- 
pated in the deliberations a negro, the Rev. Mr. 
Ward. Butler reported the resolutions in words 
whose inspiration is still fresh and ringing. They 
were assembled, it was said, " to secure free soil 
for a free people ; " the Democratic and Whig 
organizations had been dissolved, the one by sti- 
fling the voice of a great constituency, the other 
by abandoning its principles for mere availability. 
Remembering the example of their fathers in the 
first declaration of independence, they now, put- 



428 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ting their trust in God, planted themselves on the 
national platform of freedom in opposition to the 
sectional platform of slavery ; they proposed no 
interference with slavery in any State, but its pro 
hibition in the Territories then free ; for Congress, 
they said, had *' no more power to make a slave 
than to make a king." There must be no more 
compromises with slavery. They accepted the issue 
forced upon them b}'' the slave power ; and to its 
demand for more slave States and more slave Ter- 
ritories, their calm and final answer was, " no more 
slave States and no more slave territory." At the 
close w^ere the stirring and memorable words : 
" We inscribe on our banner, Free Soil, Free 
Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men ; and under it 
we will fight on and fight ever, until a triumphant 
victory shall reward our exertions." 

Joshua Leavitt of Massachusetts, one of the 
" blackest " of abolitionists, reported to the con- 
vention the name of Martin Van Buren for presi- 
dent. After the convention was over, even Gerrit 
Smith, the ultra-abolitionist candidate, declared 
that, of all the candidates whom there was the 
least reason to believe the convention would nomi- 
nate. Van Buren was his preference. The nomi- 
nation was enthusiastically made by acclamation, 
after Van Buren had on an informal ballot received 
159 votes to 129 cast for John P. Hale. A brief 
letter from Van Buren was read, declaring that 
his nomination at Utica had been against his 
earnest wishes ; that he had yielded because his 



THE FREE-SOIL PARTY 429 



obligation to tlie friends, who had now gone so 
far, required him to abide by their decision that 
his name was necessary to enable " the ever faith- 
ful Democracy of New York to sustain themselves 
in the extraordinary position into which they have 
been driven by the injustice of others;" but that 
the abandonment at Buffalo of his Utica nomina- 
tion would be most satisfactory to his feelings and 
wishes. The exclusion of slavery from the Terri« 
tories was an object, he said, " sacred in the sight 
of heaven, the accomplishment of which is due to 
the memories of the great and just men long since, 
we trust, made perfect in its courts." Charles 
Francis Adams was nominated for vice-president ; 
and dazzled and incredulous eyes beheld on a pre- 
sidential ticket with Martin Van Buren the son of 
one of his oldest and bitterest adversaries. That 
adversary had died a few months before, the best 
of his honors being his latest, those won in a que- 
rulous but valiant old age, in a fiery fight for free- 
dom. 

In September, John A. Dix, then a Democratic 
senator, accepted the Free-soil nomination for gov- 
ernor of New York. The Democratic party was 
aghast. The schismatics had suddenly gained 
great dignity and importance. Martin Van Buren, 
the venerable leader of the party, its most famous 
and distinguished member, this courtl}^ cautious 
statesman, — could it be he rushing from that 
^ honorable retirement," to whose safe retreat his 
party had committed him with so deep an affec- 



JSIO MARTIN VAN BUREN 

tion, to consort with long-haired and wild-eyed 
abolitionists ! He was the arch " apostate," lead- 
ing fiends of disunion who would rather rule in 
hell than serve in heaven. Where now was his 
boasted loyalty to the party? Rage struggled 
with loathins:. All the ancient stories told of him 
by Whig enemies were revived, and believed by 
those who had long treated them with contempt. 
It is clear, however, that Van Buren's attitude was 
in no wise inconsistent with his record. His party 
had never pronounced for the extension of slavery ; 
nor had he. The Buffalo convention was silent 
upon abolition in the District of Columbia. There 
was for the time in politics but one question, and 
that was born of the annexation of Texas, — Shall 
slavery go into free territory ? As amid the clash 
of arms the laws are stilled, so in the great fight 
for human freedom, the independent treasury, the 
tariff, and internal improvements could no longer 
divide Americans. 

The Whigs had in June nominated Taylor, one 
of the two heroes of the Mexican war. It is a 
curious fact that Taylor had been authoritatively 
sounded by the Free-soil leaders as to an accept- 
ance of their nomination. Clay and Webster were 
now discarded by their party for this bluff soldier, 
a Louisiana slaveholder of unknown politics ; and 
with entire propriety and perfect caution the Whigs 
made no platform. A declaration against the 
extension of slavery was voted down- Webster 
said at Marshfield, after indignation at Taylor's 



THE FREE-SOIL PARTY 431 

nomination had a little worn away, that for " the 
leader of the Yree-spoil party " to " become the 
leader of the Free-soil party would be a joke to 
shake his sides and mine." The anti-slavery Whigs 
hesitated for a time ; but Seward of New York 
and Horace Greeley in the New York " Tribune " 
finally led most of them to Taylor rather than, as 
Seward said, engage in "guerrilla warfare" under 
Van Buren. Whigs must not, he added, leave the 
ranks because of the Whig aifront to Clay and 
Webster. " Is it not," he finely, though for the 
occasion sophistically, said, " by popular injustice 
that greatness is burnished ? " This launching 
of the modern Republican party was, strangely 
enough, to include in New York few besides Demo- 
crats. In November, 1847, the Liberty or Aboli- 
tion party nominated John P. Hale for president ; 
but upon Van Buren's nomination he was with- 
drawn. 

Upon the popular vote in November, 1848, Van 
Buren received 291,263 votes, while there were 
1,220,544 for Cass and 1,360,099 for Taylor. Van 
Buren had no electoral votes. In no State did he 
receive as many votes as Taylor ; but in New York, 
Massachusetts, and Vermont he had more than 
Cass. Tlie vote of New York was an extraordi- 
nary tribute to his personal power ; he had 120,510 
votes to 114,318 for Cass ; and it was clear that 
nearly all the former came from the Democratic 
party. In Ohio he had 35,354 votes, most of which 
were probably drawn from the Whig abolitionists. 



432 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

In Massachusetts he had 38,058 votes, in no small 
part owing to the early splendor, the moral auster- 
ity and elevation of Charles Sumner's eloquence. 
" It is not," he said, " for the Van Buren of 1838 
that we are to vote ; but for the Van Buren of 
to-day, — the veteran statesman, sagacious, deter- 
mined, exi^erienced, who, at an age when most 
men are rejoicing to put off their armor, girds 
himself anew and enters the lists as champion of 
Freedom." Taylor had 163 electoral votes and 
Cass 127. 

The political career of Van Buren was now 
ended. It is mere speculation whether he had 
thought his election a possible thing. That he 
should think so was very unlikely. Few men had 
a cooler judgment of political probabilities ; few 
knew better how powerful was party discipline in 
the Democratic ranks, for no one had done more to 
create it ; few could have appreciated more truly 
the Whig hatred of himself. Still the wakening 
rush of moral sentiment was so strong, the bitter- 
ness of Van Buren's Ohio and New York sup- 
porters had been so great at his defeat in 1844, 
that it seemed not utterly absurd that those two 
States might vote for him. If they did, that dream 
of every third party in America might come true, 

the failure of either of the two great parties to 

obtain a majority in the electoral college, and the 
consequent choice of president in the House, where 
each of them might prefer the third party to its 
greater rival. Ambition to reenter the White 



POLITICAL CAREER ENDED 433 

House could indeed have had but the slightest in* 
fluence with him when he accepted the Free-soil 
nomination. Nor was his acceptance an act of re- 
venge, as has very commonly been said. The mo- 
tives of a public man in such a case are subtle and 
recondite even to himself. No distinguished politi- 
cal leader with strong and publicly declared opin- 
ions, however exalted his temper, can help uniting 
in his mind the cause for which he has fought with 
his own political fortunes. If he be attacked, he 
is certain to honestly believe the attack made upon 
the cause as well as upon himself. When his party 
drives him from a leadership already occupied by 
him, he may submit without a murmur ; but he will 
surely harbor the belief that his party is playing 
false with its principles. In 1848 there was a great 
and new cause for which Van Buren stood, and 
upon which his party took the wrong side ; but 
doubtless his zeal burned somewhat hotter, the edge 
of his temper was somewhat keener, for what he 
thouo-ht the indionities to himself and his imme- 
diate political friends. To say this is simply to 
pronounce him human. His acceptance of the 
nomination was given largely out of loyalty to 
those friends whose advice was strong and urgent. 
It was the mistake which any old leader of a po- 
litical party, who has enjoyed its honors, makes in 
the seeming effort — and every such political can- 
didacy at least seems to be such an effort — to 
gratify his personal ambition at its expense. Van 
Buren and his friends should have made another 



434 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

take the nomination, to which his support, however 
vigorous, should have gone sorrowfully and reluc- 
tantly ; and the form as well as the substance of 
his relations to the canvass should have been with- 
out personal interest. 

Had Van Buren died just after the election of 
1848 his reputation to-day would be far higher. 
He had stood firmly, he had suffered politically, 
for a clear, practical, and philosophical method and 
limitation of government ; he had adhered with 
strict loyalty to the party committed to this method, 
until there had arisen the cause of human freedom, 
which far transcended any question still open upon 
the method or limits of government. With this 
cause newly risen, a cause surely not to leave the 
political field except in victory, he was now closely 
united. He might therefore have safely trusted to 
the judgment of later days and of wiser and truer- 
sighted men, growing in number and influence 
every year. His offense could never be pardoned 
by his former associates at the South and their 
allies at the North. No confession of error, though 
it were full of humiliation, no new and affectionate 
return to party allegiance, could make them forget 
what they sincerely deemed astounding treason ano 
disastrous sacrilege. Loyal remembrance of his 
incomparable party services had irretrievably gone, 
to be brought back by no reasoning and by no per- 
suasion. If he were to live, he should not have wa- 
vered from his last position. Its righteousness was 
to be plainer and plainer with the passing years. 



POLITICAL CAREER ENDED 43S 

Van Buren did live, however, long after his hon- 
orable battle and defeat ; and lived to dim its honor 
by the faltering of mistaken patriotism. In 1849, 
John Van Biiren, during the efforts to unite the 
Democratic party in New York, declared it his wish 
to make it " the great anti-slavery party of the 
Union." Early in 1850 and when the compro- 
mise was threatened at Washington, he wrote to 
the Free-soil convention of Connecticut that there 
had never been a time when the opponents of sla- 
very extension were more urgently called to act 
with energy and decision or to hold their represen- 
tatives to a rigid responsibility, if they faltered or 
betrayed their trust. With little doubt his father 
approved these utterances. A year later, however, 
the ex-President, with nearly all Northern men, 
yielded to the soporific which Clay in his old age 
administered to the American people. In their 
support of the great compromise between slavery 
and freedom, Webster and Clay forfeited much of 
their fame, and justly. For though the cause of 
humanity gained a vast political advantage in the 
admission of California as a free State, the advan- 
tage, it was plain, could not have been long delayed 
had there been no compromise. But the rest of 
the new territory was thrown into a struggle 
among its settlers, although the power of Congress 
over the Territories was not yet denied ; and a 
fugitive-slave law of singular atrocity was passed. 
All the famous Northern Whigs were now true 
■^^ doughfaces." Fillmore, president through Tay- 



436 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

lor's death, one of tlie most dignified and timid of 
their number, signed the compromise bills. 

The compromise being passed, Van Buren with 
almost the entire North submissively sought to 
believe slavery at last expelled from politics. It 
would have been a wise heroism, it would have 
given Van Buren a clearer, a far higher place with 
posterity, if after 1848 he had even done no more 
than remain completely aloof from the timid poli- 
tics of the time, if he had at least refused acqui- 
escence in any compromise by which concessions 
were made to slavery. But he was an old man. 
He shared with his ancient and famous Whig 
rivals that intense love and almost adoration of the 
Union, upon which the arrogant leaders of the 
South so hmg and so successfully played. The 
compromise was accomplished. It would perhaps 
be the last concession to the furious advance of 
the cruel barbarism. The free settlers in the new 
Territories would, he hoped, by their number and 
hardihood, defeat the incoming slave-owuers, and 
even under '* squatter sovereignty " save their homes 
from slavery. If the Union should now stand 
without further disturbance, all might still come 
riofht without civil war. Economic laws, the inex- 
orable and beneficent progress of civilization, would 
perhaps begin, slowly indeed but surely, to press 
to its death this remnant of ancient savagery. But 
if the Union were to be broken by a violation of 
the compromise, a vast and irremediable cata- 
strophe and ruin would undo all the patriotic labors 



POLITICAL CAREER ENDED 437 

of sixty years, would dismiss to lasting- unreality 
the dreams of three generations of great men wlio 
had loved their country. It seemed too ap{)ailing' 
a responsibility. 

Upon all this reasoning there is much unfair 
modern judgment. The small number of resohite 
abolitionists, who cared little for the Union in 
comparison with the one cause of human rights, 
and whose moral fervor found in the compromises 
of the Constitution, so dear and sacred to ail 
American statesaien, only a covenant with hell, 
may for the moment be ignored. Among them 
there was not a public man occupying politically 
responsible or widely influential place. The vast 
body of Northern sentiment was in two great 
classes. The one was led by men like Seward, 
and even Benton, who considered the South a great 
bully. They believed that to a firm front against 
the extension of slavery the South would, after 
many fire-eating words, surrender in peace. The 
other class included most of the influential men of 
the day, some of them greater men, some lesser, 
and some little men. Webster, Clay, Cass, Buch- 
nnan, Marcy, Douglas, Fillmore, Dickinson, were 
now joined by Van Buren and by many Free- 
soil men of 1848 daunted at the seemino" slow- 
ness with which the divine mills were grinding. 
They believed that the South, to assert the fancied 
" rights " of their monstrous wrong, would accept 
disunion and even more, that in this cause it would 
fiercely accept all the terrors of a civil war and its 



438 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

limitless devastation. The event proved the first 
men utterly in the wrong; and it was fortunate 
tliat their mistake was not visible until in 1861 the 
battle was irreversibly joined. The second and 
more numerous class were right. There had to be 
yielding, unless such evils were to be let loose, 
unless Webster's " ideas, so full of all that is horrid 
and horrible," were to come true. The anxiety 
not to offend the South was perhaps most strikingly 
shown after the election of Lincoln. A distin- 
guished statesman of the modern Republican party 
has recently pointed out ^ that in February, 1861, 
the Republican members of Congress, and among 
them Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens, ac- 
quiesced in the organization of the new Territo- 
ries of Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada, without 
any prohibition of slavery, thus ignoring the very 
principle and the only principle upon which their 
great battle had been fought and their great vic- 
tory won. 

Complete truth dwelt only with the small and 
hated abolitionist minority. Without honored and 
influential leaders in political life they alone saw 
that war with all these horrors was better, or even 
a successful secession was better, than further sur- 
render of human rights, a surrender whose corrup- 
tion and barbarism would cloud all the glories, 
and destroy all the beneficence of the Union. No 
historical judgment has been more unjust and 
partial than the implied condemnation of Van 
1 James G. Blaine's Ttventy Years, vol. i. pp. 269, 272. 



IN RETIREMENT 43S 

Buren for his acquiescence in Clay's compromise, 
while only gentle words have chided the great 
statesmen whose eloquence was more splendid and 
inspiring but whose devotion to the Union was 
never more supreme than Van Buren's, — states- 
men who had made no sacrifice like his in 1844, 
who in their whitening years had taken no bold 
step like his in 1848, and who had in 1850 actively 
promoted the surrender to which Van Buren did 
no more than submit after it was accomplished. 

In 1852 the overwhelming agreement to the 
compromise brought on a colorless presidential 
campaign, fought in a sort of fool's paradise. Its 
character was well represented by Franklin Pierce, 
the second Democratic mediocrity raised to the 
first place in the party and the land, and by 
the absurd political figure of General Scott, fitl}^ 
enough the last candidate of the decayed Whig 
party. Both parties heartily approved the com> 
promise, but it mattered little which of the two 
candidates were chosen. The votes cast for John 
P. Hale, the Free-soil candidate, were as much 
more significant and honorable as they were fewer 
than those cast for Pierce or Scott. Van Buren, 
in a note to a meeting in New York, declared that 
time and circumstances had issued edicts against 
his attendance, but that he earnestly wished for 
Pierce's election. He attempted no argument in 
this, perhaps the shortest political letter he ever 
vrote. But John Van Buren, in a speech at Al- 
bany, gave some reasons which prevent much con- 



440 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

demnation of his father's perfunctory acquiescence 
in the action of his party. The movement of 1848, 
he said, had been intended to prevent the extension 
of slavery. Since then, California had come in, a 
Free State, and not, as the South had desired, a 
slave State ; and ''" the abolition of the slave market 
in the District of Columbia was another great point 
gained." The poverty of reasons was shown in 
the eager insistence that every member of Congress 
from New Hampshire had voted against slavery 
extension, and that the Democratic party now took 
its candidate from that State "■ without any pledges 
whatever." 

After this election Van Buren spent two years 
in Europe. President Pierce tendered him the 
position of the American arbitrator upon tlie Bri- 
tish-American claims commission established under 
the treaty of February 8, 1853, but he declined. 
During his absence the South secured the Kansas- 
Nebraska bill, the repeal of the Missouri Com- 
promise, and the practical opening to slavery of 
the new Territories north of the line of 36° 30'. 
If the settlers of Kansas, which lay wholly on the 
free side of that conipromise line, desired slavery, 
they were to have it. But even this was not 
sufficient. The hardy settlers of this frontier, 
separated though they were by the slave State of 
Missouri from free soil and free influences, would, 
it now seemed, pretty certainly favor freedom. 
The ermine of the Supreme Court had, therefore, to 
be used to sanctify with the Dred Scott decision 



IN RETIREMENT 441 

the last demand of slavery, inconsistent tliongh it 
was with the claims of the South from the time 
when it secured the Missouri Compromise until 
Calhoun grimly advanced his monstrous proposi- 
tions. Slavery was to be decreed a constitutional 
right in all Territories, whose exercise in them Con- 
gress was without power to prohibit, and which 
could not be prevented even by the majority of 
their settlers until they were admitted as States. 

Van Buren came back to America when there 
was still secret within the judicial breast the mo- 
mentous decision that the American flag carried 
human slavery with it to conquered territory as a 
necessary incident of its stars and stripes, and that 
Congress covdd not, if it would, save the land to 
freedom. Van Buren voted for Buchanan ; a vote 
essentially inconsistent with his Free-soil position, 
a vote deeply to be regretted. He still thought 
that free settlers wonld defeat the intention of the 
Kansas-Nebraska act, and bring in, as they after- 
wards did, a free though bleeding Kansas. There 
was somethino: crude and menacins; in this new 
Republican party, and in its enormous and growing 
enthusiasm. It was hard to believe that its candi- 
date had been seriously selected for chief magis- 
trate of the United States. Fremont probably 
seemed to Van Buren a picturesque sentimentalist 
leading the way to civil war, which, if it v/ere to 
come, ought, so it seemed to this former senator 
and minister and president, to be led in by serious 
and disciplined statesmen. The new party was 



442 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

rej)iilsive to him as a body chiefly of Whigs ; old 
and bitter adversaries whom he distrusted, with 
hosts of camp-followers smelling the coming spoils. 
All this a young man might endure, when he 
saw the clear fact that the Republican convention, 
ignoring for the time all former differences, had 
pronounced not a word inconsistent with the Demo- 
cratic platform of 1840, and had made only the 
one declaration essential to American freedom and 
right, that slavery should not go into the Terri- 
tories. Van Buren was not, however, a young man, 
or one of the few old men in whom a fiery sense of 
morality, and an eager and buoyant resolution, are 
iinchilled by thinner and slower blood, and indomi- 
tably overcome the conservative influences of age. 
A bold outcry from him, even naw, would have 
placed him for posterity in one of the few niches set 
apart to the very greatest Americans. But since 
1848 Van Buren had come to seventy-four years. 

Invited to the Tammany Hall celebration of In- 
dependence Day, he wrote, on June 28, 1856, a 
letter in behalf of Buchanan. There was no dimi- 
nution in explicit clearness ; but hope was nearly 
gone ; the peril of the Union obscured every other 
danger ; the South was so threatening that patriot- 
ism seemed to him to require at the least a surren- 
der to all that had passed ; and for the future our 
best reliance would be upon a fair vote in Kansas 
between freedom and slavery. He could not come 
to its meeting, he told Tammany Hall, because of 
his age. He had left one invitation unanswered; 



IN RETIREMENT 443 

and if he were so to leave another, he might be 
suspected of a desire to conceal his sentiments. 
But this letter should be his last, as it was his 
first, appearance in the canvass. He was glad of 
the Democratic reunion ; for although not always 
perfectly right, in no other party had there been 
" such exclusive regard and devotion to the main- 
tenance of human rights and the happiness and 
welfare of the masses of the people." There was 
a touch of age in his fond recitals of the long ser- 
vices of that party since, in Jefferson's days, it had 
its oriofin with " the root-and-branch friends of the 
Republican system ; " of its support of the war of 
1812 ; of its destruction of the national bank ; of 
its establishment of an independent treasury. But 
slavery, he admitted, was now the living issue. 
Upon that he had no regrets for his course. He 
had always preferred the method of dealing with 
that institution practiced by the founders of the 
government. He lamented the recent departure 
from that method ; no one was more sincerely op- 
posed than himself to the repeal of the Missouri 
Compromise. He had heard of it, and condemned 
it in a foreign land ; he had there foreseen the 
disastrous reopening of the slavery agitation. But 
the measure was now accomplished ; there was no 
more left than to decide what was the best now to 
do. The Kansas-Nebraska act had, he said, grad- 
ually become less obnoxious to him ; though this 
impression, he admitted, might result from the 
unanimous acquiescence in it of the party in which 



444 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

he had been reared. Its operation, he trusted, 
would be beneficial ; and he had now come to be- 
lieve that the feelings and opinions of the free 
States would be more respected under its provi- 
sions than by specific congressional interference. 
He did not doubt the power of Congress to enable 
the people of a Territory to exclude slavery. Buch- 
anan's pledge to use the presidential power to 
restore harmony among the sister States could be 
redeemed in but one way ; and that was, to secure 
to the actual settlers of the Territory a " full, free, 
and practical enjoyment " of the rights of suffrage 
on the slavery question conferred by the act. He 
praised Buchanan, if not exuberantly, still suffi- 
ciently. He must, Yan Buren thought, be solici- 
tous for his reputation in the near '"evening of his 
life." He believed that Buchanan would redeem 
his pledge, and should therefore cheerfully support 
him. If Buchanan were elected, there were " good 
grounds for hope " that the Union might be saved. 
Such was this saddening and despondent letter. 
It was a defense of a vote which it was rather sorry 
work that he should have needed to make. But the 
tramp of armies and the conflagration of American 
institutions were heard and seen in the sky with 
terrifying vividness. The letter secured, however, 
no forgiveness from the angry South. The '' Rich- 
mond AYhig " said : '" If there is a man within the 
limits of the Republic who is cordially abhorred and 
detested by intelligent and patriotic men of all par- 
ties at the South, that man is Martin Van Buren." 



IN RETIREMENT 445 

Many of the best Americans shared Van Bu- 
ren's distrust of Fremont and of those who sup- 
ported Fremont ; they shared his love of peace 
and his fear of that bloodshed, North and South, 
which seemed the dismal El Dorado to which the 
"pathfinder's" feet were s uely tending. So the 
majority of the Northern voters tiiought ; for those 
north of Mason and Dixon's line who divided 
themselves between Buchanan and Fillmore, the 
candidate of the "Silver Gray" Whigs, consid- 
erably outnumbered the voters for Fremont. 

In 1860 Van Buren voted for the union electo- 
ral ticket which represented in New York the 
combined opposition to Lincoln, Every motive 
which had influenced him in 1856 had now in- 
creased even more than his years. The Republi- 
can party was not only now come bringing, it 
seemed, the torch in full flame to light an awful 
conflagration ; but in its second national conven- 
tion there became obvious upon the tariff question 
the preponderance of the Whig elements, which 
made up the larger though not the more earnest or 
efficient body of its supporters. 

After Van Buren's return from Europe in 1855, 
he lived in dignified and gracious repose. This 
complete and final escape from the rush about him 
had often seemed in his busy strenuous years full 
of delight. But doubtless now in the peaceful 
pleasures of Lindenwald and in the occasional 
glimpses of the more crowded social life of New 
York which was glad to honor him, there were the 



446 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

regrets and slowly dying impatience, the sense of 
isolation, which must at the best touch with some 
sadness the later and well-earned and even the 
best-crowned years. At this time he began writing 
memoirs of his life and times, which were brought 
down to the years 1833-1834 ; but they were 
never revised by hira and have not been published. 
Out of this work grew a sketch of the early growth 
of American parties, which was edited by his sons 
and printed in 1867. Its pages do not exhibit the 
firm and logical order which was so characteristic of 
Van Buren's political compositions. It was rather 
the reminiscence of the political philosophy which 
had completely governed him. With some repeti- 
tions, but in an easy and interesting way, he re- 
called the far-reaching political differences between 
Jefferson and Hamilton. In these chapters of his 
old age are plain the profound and varied influ- 
ences which had been exercised over him by the 
great founder of his party, and his unquenchable 
animosity toward? " the money power " from the 
days of the first secretary of the treasury to its 
victory of " buffoonery " in 1840. In one chapter, 
with words rather courtly but still not to be mis- 
taken, he condemns Buchanan for a violation of 
the principles of Jefferson and Jackson in accept- 
ing the Dred Scott decision as a rule of political 
action ; and this the more because its main con- 
clusion was unnecessary to adjudge Dred Scott's 
riclits in that suit, and because its announcement 
«ras part of a political scheme. Chief Justice 



IN RETIREMENT 447 

Taney and Buchanan, Van Buren pointed out, 
though raised to power by the Democratic party, 
had joined it late in life, " with opinions formed 
and matured in an antagonist school." Both had 
come from the Federalist ranks, whose political 
heresy Van Buren believed to be hopelessly in- 
curable. 

At the opening of the civil war Van Buren's ani- 
mosity to Buchanan's behavior became more and 
more marked. He strongly sympathized with the 
uprising of the North ; and sustained the early 
measures of Lincoln's administration. But he 
was not to see the dreadful but lasting and benign 
solution of the problem of American slavery. His 
life ended when the fortunes of the nation were at 
their darkest ; when McClellan's seven days' battle 
from the Chickahominy to the James was just over, 
and the North was waiting in terror lest his troops 
might not return in time to save the capital. For 
several months he suffered from an asthmatic attack, 
which finally became a malignant catarrh, causing 
him much anguish. In the latter days of his sick- 
ness his mind wandered ; but when sensible and 
collected he still showed a keen interest in public 
affairs, expressed his confidence in President Lin- 
coln and General McClellan, and declared his faith 
that the rebellion would end without lasting dam- 
age to the Union. 

On July 24, 1862, he died, nearly eighty years 
old, in the quiet summer air at Lindenwald, the 
noise of battle far away from his green lawns and 



448 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

clumps of trees. In the ancient Dutch church at 
Kinderhook the simple funeral was performed ; 
and a great rustic gathering paid the last and best 
honor of honest and respectful grief to their old 
friend and neighbor. For his fame had brought 
its chief honor to this village of his birth, the vil- 
lage to which in happy ending of his earthly career 
he returned, and where through years of well-or- 
dered thrift, of a gentle and friendly hospitality, 
and of interesting and not embittered reminiscence, 
he had been permitted 

" To husband out life's taper at the close, 
Aud keep the flame from wasting by repose." 



CHAPTER XTI 

VAN BUREn's character AND PLACE IN HISTORY 

IN the engT-aved portrait of Van Buren in old age, 
prefixed to his " History of Parties," are plainly 
to be seen some of his traits, — the alert outlooking 
upon men, the bright, easy good-humor, the firm, 
self-reliant judgment. Inman's painting, now in 
the City Hall of New York,^ gives the face in the 
prime of life, ^ — the same shrewd, kindly expres- 
sion, but more positively touched with that half 
cynical doubt of men which almost inevitably be- 
longs to those in great places. The deep wrinkles 
of the old a:id retired ex-president were hardly yet 
incipient in the smooth, prosperous, almost compla- 
cent countenance of the governor. In the earlier 
picture the locks flared outwards from the face, as 
they did later; as yet, however, they were dark 
and a bit curling. His form was always slender 
and erect, but liardly reached the middle height, so 
that to his political enemies it was endless delight 
to call him *' Little Van." 

In the older picture one sees a scrupulous dain- 
tiness about the ruffled shirt and immaculate neck- 

1 An engraving' of this portrait accompanies Holland's bio- 
^rapny, written for the campaign of 1836. 



450 MARTIN VAN BUREX 

ercbief ; for Van Buren was fond of the elegance 
of life. The Whigs nsed to declare him an aristo- 
crat, given to un-iVmerican, to positively British 
splendor. Very certainly he never affected con- 
tempt for the gracious and stately refinement suited 
to his long held place of public honor, that con= 
tempt which a silly underrating of American good 
sense has occasionally commended to our states- 
men. At Lindenwald, among books and guests 
and rural cares, he led what in the best and truest 
sense was the life of a country gentleman, not set 
like an urban exotic among the farmers, but fond 
of his neighbors as they were fond of him, and 
unaffectedly sharing without loss of distinction or 
elegance their thrifty and homely cares. W beR 
he retired to this home he was able, without undig- 
nified or humiliating shifts, to live in ease and 
even affluence. For in 1841 his fortune of per- 
haps 1200,000 was a generous one. His last days 
were not, like those of Jefferson and Monroe and 
Jackson, embittered by money anxieties, the pen- 
alty of the careless profusion the temptation to 
which, felt even by men wise in the affairs of oth- 
ers, is often greater than the certain danger and un- 
wisdom of its indulgence. But no suggestion was 
breathed against his pecuniary integrity, public or 
private. Nor was there heard of him any story or 
wrong or oppression or ungenerous dealing. 

Van Buren's extraordinary command of himself 
was apparent in his manners. They are finely 
described from intimate acquaintance by William 



CHARACTER 451 

Ailen Butler, the son of Van Buren's long-time 
friend, in his charming and appreciative sketch 
printed just after Van Buren's death. They had, 
Mr. Butler said, a neatness and polish which served 
every turn of domestic, social, and public inter- 
course. " As you saw him once, you saw him al- 
ways — always punctilious, always polite, always 
cheerful, always self-possessed. It seemed to any> 
one who studied this phase of his character as if, 
in some early moment of destiny, his whole nature 
had been bathed in a cool, clear, and unruffled 
depth, from which it drew this life-long serenity 
and self-control." An accomplished English tra- 
veler, " the author of ' Cyril Thornton,' " who saw 
him while secretary of state, and before he had 
been abroad, said that he had more of '' the manner 
of the world " than any other of the distinguished 
men at Washington ; that in conversation he was 
"full of anecdote and vivacity." Chevalier, one 
of our French critics, in his letters from America 
described him as setting up '' for the American 
Talleyrand." John Quincy Adams, as has been 
said, sourly mistook all this, and even the especial 
courtesy Van Buren paid him after his political 
downfall, as mere proof of insincerity ; and he 
more than once compared Van Buren to x^aron 
Burr, a comparison of which many Democrats 
were fond after 1848. In his better-natured mo- 
ments, however, Adams saw in his adversary a 
resemblance to the conciliatory and philosophic 
Madison. For his "extreme caution in avoiding 



452 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

and averting personal collisions," he called him 
another Susie of Moliere's *''• Amphitryon," *' ami 
de tout le monde." 

Van Biiren's skill in dealing with men was in- 
deed extraordinary. It doubtless came from this 
temper of amity, and from an inborn genius for 
society ; but it had been wonderfully sharpened in 
the unrivaled school of New York's early politics. 
When he was minister at London, he wrote that he 
was making it his business to be cordial with pro- 
minent men on both sides ; a branch of duty, he 
said, in which he was not at home, because he had 
all his life been " wholly ou one side." But he 
Y/as jocosely unjust to himself. He \vas, for the 
politics of his day, abundantly fair to his adver- 
saries. Sometimes indeed he saw too much of 
what might be said on the other side. Had he 
seen less, he would sometimes have been briefer, 
less indulgent in formal caution. Nor did he fail 
to avoid the unnecessary misery caused to many 
public men, the obstacles needlessly raised in their 
way, by personal disputes, or by letting into nego- 
tiations matters of controversy irrelevant to the 
thing to be done. Patience in listening, a steady 
and singidarly acute observance of the real end he 
sought, and a quick, keen reading of men, saved 
him this wearing unhappiness so widespread in 
public life. Once he thus criticised his friend 
Cambreleng : '' There is more in small matters 
than he is always aware of, although he is a really 
sensible and useful man." In this maxim of 



CHARACTER 453 

lesser things Van Buren was carefully practiced. 
Daring the Jackson- Adams campaign, the younger 
Hamilton was about sending to some important 
person an account of the general. Van Buren, 
knowing of this, wrote to Hamilton, and, after 
signing his letter, added : " P. S. — Does the old 
gentleman have prayers in his own house ? If so, 
mention it modestly." 

His self-command was not stilted or unduly pre- 
cise or correct. He was very human. A candidate 
for governor of New York would to-day hardly 
write to another public man, however friendly to 
him, as Van Buren in August and September, 1828, 
wrote to Hamilton. " Bet on Kentucky, Indiana, 
and Illinois," he said, "jointly if you can, or any 
two of them ; don't forget to bet all you can." 
But this was the fashion of the day.^ His life was 
entirely free from the charges of dissipation or of 
irregular habits, then so commonly, and often truly, 
made against great men. This very correctness 
was part of the offense he gave his rivals and their 
followers. It would hardly be accurate to describe 
him, even in younger years, as jovial with his 
friends ; but he was perfectly companionable. Of 

1 The mania for election betting- among- public men was very 
curious. In the letters and memoranda printed by Mackenzie, the 
bets of John Van Buren and Jesse Hoyt are g^iven in detail. They 
ranged from $5000 to $50 ; from " three cases of champagne " or 
" two bales of cotton," to " boots, ST," or " a ham, S;5." They 
were made with the younger Alexander Hamilton, James Watson 
Webb, Moses 11. Grinnell, John A. King-, George F. Talman, 
Dudley belden, and other notable men of the time. 



454 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

a social and cheerful temper, lie not only liked the 
decorous gaiety of receptions and public entertain- 
ment, but was delighted and delightful in closer 
and easier conversation and in the chat of familiar 
friends. His reminiscences of men are said to have 
been full of the charm which flows from a strong 
natural sense of humor, and a correct and vivid 
memory of human action and character. 

There are many apocryphal stories of Van Bu- 
ren's craft or cunning or selfishness in politics. It 
is a curious appreciation with which reputable his- 
torians have received such stories from irrespon- 
sible or anonymous sources ; for they deserve as lit- 
tle credence as those told of Lincoln's frivolity or 
indecenc}^ To them all may not only be pleaded 
the absence of any proof deserving respect, but 
they are refuted by positive proof, such as from 
earliest times has been deemed the best which pri- 
vate character can in its own behalf offer to his- 
tory. In politics Van Buren enjoyed as much 
strong and constant friendship as he encountered 
strong and constant hatred. Nothing points more 
surely to the essential soundness of life and the 
generosity of a public man than the near and long- 
continued friendship of other able, upright, and 
honorably ambitious men. It was an extraordi- 
nary measure in which Van Buren enjoyed friend- 
ship of this quality. With all the light upon his 
character, Jackson was too shrewd to suffer long 
from imposition. His intimacy with Van Buren 
for twenty years and more was really affectionate ; 



CHARACTER 45g 

his admiration for the younger statesman was pro- 
found. The explanation is both unnecessary and 
unworthy, which ascribes to hatred of Clay all 
Jackson's ardor in the canvass of 1840 or his al- 
most pathetic anxiety for Van Buren's nomination 
in 1844. Their peculiar and continuous associa- 
tion for six years at Washington had so powerfully 
established Van Buren in his love and respect, 
that neither distant separation nor disease nor the 
nearer intricjues and devices of rivals could abate 
them. Those who were especially known as Van 
Buren men, those who not only stood with him in 
the party but who went with him out of it, were 
men of great talents and of the highest character. 
Butler's career closely accompanied Van Buren's. 
Both were born at Kinderhook ; they were together 
in Hudson, in Albany, in Washington ; they were 
together as Bucktails, as Jacksonian Democrats, as 
Free-soil men ; they were close to one another from 
Butler's boyhood until, more than a half-century 
later, they were parted by death. To this strong- 
headed and sound-hearted statesman, we are told 
by William Allen Butler, in a fine and wellnigh 
sufficient eulogy, that Van Buren was the object 
of an affection true and steadfast, faithful through 
good report and evil report, loyal to its own high 
sense of duty and affection, tender and generous. 
Benton, liberal and sane a slaveholder though he 
was, did not approve the Wilmot Proviso, or join 
the Free-soil revolt. But in retirement and old 
a^e. reviewing his " Thirty Years," during twenty 



456 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

of which he and Van Buren had, spite of many 
differences, remained on closely intimate terms, he 
showed a deep liking for the man. Silas Wright, 
Azariah C. Flagg, and John A. Dix, all strong and 
famous characters in the public life of New York, 
were among the others of those steadily faithful in 
loyal and unwavering regard for this political and 
personal chief. Nor were they deceived. Jackson 
and Butler, Wright and Flagg and Dix, sturdy, 
upright, skillful, experienced men of affairs, were 
not held in true and lifelong friendship and admi- 
ration by the insinuating manners, the clever man- 
agement, the selfish and timid aims, which make 
tlie Machiavellian caricature of Van Buren so 
often drawn. No American in public life has 
shown firmer and longer devotion to his friends. 
His reputation for statesmanship must doubtless 
rest upon the indisputable facts of his career. But 
for his integrity of life, for his sincerity, for his 
fidelity to those obligations of political, party, and 
personal friendship, within which lies so much of 
the usefulness as well as of the singular charm of 
public life, his relations with these men make a 
proof not to be questioned, and surely not to be 
weakened by the malicious or anonymous stories 
of political warfare. 

For the absurdly sinister touch which his po- 
litical enemies gave to his character, it is difficult 
now to find any just reason. It may be that the 
cool and imperturbable appearance of good-nature, 
with which he received the savage and malevolent 



CHARACTER 457 

attacks so contliiQally made upon him, to many 
seemed so impossible to be real as to be sheer hy- 
pocrisy ; 1 and from the fancy of such hypocrisy it 
was easy for the imagination to infer all the arts 
and characteristics of deceit. Doubtless the cau- 
tion of Van Buren's political papers irritated im- 
patient and angry opponents. They found them 
full of elaborate and subtle reservations, as they 
fancied, against future political contingencies ; a 
charge, it ought to be remembered, which is con- 
tinually made against the ripest, bravest, and 
greatest character in English politics of to-day or 
of the century.^ Van Buren's reasoning was per- 
fectly clear, and his style highly finished. But he 
had not the sort of genius which in a few phrases 
states and lights up a political problem. The com- 
plexity of human affairs, the danger of short and 
sweeping assertions, pressed upon him as he wrote ; 
and the amplitude of his arguments, sometimes 
tending to prolixity, seemed timid and lawyer-like 
to those who disliked his conclusions. 

* One of the latest and most important historians of the time, 
after saying- that " nothing- ruffled " Van Buren, is contented with 
a different explanation frora mine. Professor Sumner says that 
" he was thick-skinned, elastic, and toug-h ; he did not win confi- 
dence from anybody." But within another sentence or two the 
historian adds, as if effect did not always need adequate cause, 
that " as president he showed the honorable desire to have a 
statesmanlike and high-toned administration." (Sumner's Jack- 
son, p. 451.) 

2 Here again I spoke of Gladstone, to whom, as this revised 
edition is going to press, the civilized world is bringing, in his 
death, a noble and fitting tribute. 



458 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Van Buren was not, however, an unpopular man, 
except as toward the hist his politics were unpopu- 
hir as politics out of sympathy with those of either 
of the great parties, and except also at the South, 
where he was soon suspected and afterwards hated 
as an anti-slavery man. He was on the whole a 
strong candidate at the polls. In his own State 
and at the Northeast his strength with the people 
grew more and more until his defeat by the slave- 
holders in 1844. Perhaps the most striking proof 
of this strength was the canvass of 1848, when in 
New York he was able to take fully half of his 
party with him into irregular opposition, a feat 
with hardly a precedent in our political history. 
And there was complete reciprocity. Van Buren 
was profoundly democratic in his convictions. 
He thoroughly, honestlj^, and withovit demagogy 
believed in the common people and in their com- 
petence to deal wisely with political difficulties. 
Even when his faith was tried by what he deemed 
the mistakes of popular elections, he still trusted 
to what in a famous phrase of his he called " the 
sober second thought of the people." ^ 

However widely the student of history may differ 
fi'om the politics of Van Buren 's associates, the 
politics of Benton, Wright. Butler, and Dix, and 
in a later rank of his New York disciples, of Sam- 

1 This expression wa;^ not original with Van Buren, as has been 
supposed. It was used by Fisher Ames in 1788; and liartlett's 
Quotations also gives a still earlier use of part of it by Matthew 
Henry in 1710. 



HK POLITICAL CREED 459 

uel J. Tilclen and Sanfoid E. Church, it is impossi- 
ble not to see that their political purpose was at 
the least as long and steady as their friendship for 
Van Buren. Love for the Union, a belief in a 
simple, economical, and even un heroic government, 
a jealousy of taking money from the people, and 
a scrupulous restriction upon the use of public 
moneys for any but public purposes, a strict limi- 
tation of federal powers, a dislike of slavery and 
an opposition to its extension, — these made up 
one of the great and fruitful political creeds of 
An^erica, a creed which had ptrdent and hopeful 
apostles a half century ago, and which, save in the 
articles which touched slavery and are now happily 
obsolete, will doubtless find apostles no less ardent 
and hopeful a half century hence. Each of its 
assertions has been found in other creeds ; but the 
entire creed with all its articles made the peculiar 
and powerful faith only of the Van Buren men. 
As history gradually sets reputations aright, the 
leader of these men must justly wear the laurel of 
a statesman who, apart from his personal and party 
relations and ambitions, has stood clearly for a 
powerful and largely triumphant cause. 

No vague, no thoughtless rush of popular senti- 
ment touched or shook this faith of Van Buren. 
Had there been indeed a readier emphasis about 
him, a heartier and quicker sympathy with the 
temper of the day, he would perhaps have aroused 
a popular enthusiasm, he might perhaps have been 
the hero which in fact he never was. But his 



460 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

intellectual perceptions did not permit the subtle 
self-deceit, the enthusiastic surrender to current 
sentiment, to which the striking figures that de- 
light the masses of men are so apt to yield. Van 
Buren was steadfast from the beginning to the 
end, save when the war threats of slavery alarmed 
his old age and the sober second thought of a 
really patient and resolute people seemed a long 
time coming. Two years before his death Jeffer- 
son wrote to Van Buren an elaborate sketch of 
his relations with Hamilton and of our first party 
division. Two years before his own death Van 
Buren was finishing a history of the same political 
division written upon the theory and in the tone 
running through Jefferson's writings. It was com- 
posed by Van Buren in the very same temper in 
which he had respectfully read the weighty epistle 
from the great apostle of Democracy. Between 
the endino; life at Monticello and that at Linden- 
wald, the political faith of the older man had been 
steadily followed by the younger. 

The rise of the " spoils " system, and the late 
coming, but steadily increasing perception of its 
corruptions and dangers, have seriously and justly 
dimmed Van Buren's fame. But history should 
be not less indulgent to him than to other great 
Americans. The practical politics which he first 
knew had been saturated with the abuse. He did 
no more than adopt accustomed means of political 
warfare. Neither he nor other men of his time 
perceived the kind of evil which political proscrip- 



HIS CHARACTER 461 

tion of men in unpolitical places must yield. 
They saw the undoubted rightfulness of shattering 
the ancient idea that in otiices there was a property 
right. They saw but too clearly the apparent help 
which the powerful love of holding office brings to 
any political cause, and which has been used by 
every great minister of state the world over. Van 
Buren had, however, no love of patronage in itself. 
The use of a party as a mere agency to distribute 
offices would have seemed to him contemptible. 
In neither of the great executive places which he 
held, as governor, secretary of state, or president, 
did he put into an extreme practice the prescrip- 
tive rules which were far more rigorously adopted 
about him. To his personal temper not less than 
to his conceptions of public duty the inevitable 
meanness and wrong of the system were distaste- 
ful. 

Chief among the elements of Van Buren's public 
character ought to be ranked his moral courage 
and the explicitness of his political utterances, — 
the two qualities which, curiously enough, were 
most angrily denied him by his enemies. His well- 
known Shocco Springs letter of 1832 on the tariff 
was indeed lacking in these qualities ; but he was 
then not chiefly interested. There was only a 
secondary reponsibility upon him. But it is not 
too much to say that no American in responsible 
and public station, since the days when Washing- 
ton returned from his walk among the miserable 
huts at Valley Forge to write to the Continental 



462 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

Congress, or to face the petty imbecilities of the 
jealous colonists, has shown so complete a political 
courage as that with which Van Buren faced the 
crisis of 1837, or in which he wrote his famous 
Texas letter. Nor did any American, stirred with 
ambition, conscious of great powers, as was this 
captain of politicians, and bringing all his political 
fortunes, as he must do, to the risks of universal 
suffrage, ever meet living issues dangerously divid- 
ing men ready to vote for him if he would but 
remain quiet, with clearer or more decided answers 
than did Van Buren in his Sherrod Williams letter 
of 1836 and in most of his chief public utterances 
from that year until 1844. The courtesies of his 
manner, his failure in trenchant brevity, and even 
the almost complete absence of invective or extra- 
vagance from his papers or speeches, have obscured 
these capital virtues of his character. He saw too 
many dangers ; and he sometimes made it too clear 
that he saw them. But upon legitimate issues he 
was among the least timid and the most explicit of 
great Americans. No president of ours has in 
office been more courageous or more direct. 

It is perhaps an interesting, it is at least a harm- 
less speculation, to look for Van Buren's place of 
honor in the varied succession of men who have 
reached the first office, though not always the first 
place, in American public life. Every student will 
be powerfully, even when unconsciously, influenced 
in this judgment by the measure of strength or 
beneficence he accords to different political tend« 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 463 

encies. With this warning the present writer will, 
however, venture upon an opinion. 

Van Buren very clearly does not belong among 
the mediocrities or accidents of the White House, 
— among Monroe, Harrison, Tyler, Poik, Taylor, 
Fillmore, and Pierce, not to meddle with the years 
since the civil war whose party disputes are still 
part of contemporary politics. Van Buren reached 
the presidency by political abilities and public ser- 
vices of the first order, as the most distinguished 
active member of his party, and with a universal 
popular recognition for years before his promotion 
that he was among the three or four Americans 
from whom a president would be naturally chosen. 
Buchanan's experience in public life was perhaps 
as great as Van Buren's, and his political skill and 
distinction made his accession to the presidency by 
no means unworthy. But he never led, he never 
stood for a cause ; he never led men ; he was never 
chief in his party ; and in his great office he sank 
with timidity before the slaveholding aggressors, 
as they strove with vengeance to suppress freedom 
in Kansas, and before the menaces and open plun- 
derings of disunion. Van Buren showed no such 
timidity in a place of equal difficulty. 

Jackson stands in a rank by himself. He had 
a stronger and more vivid personality than Van 
Buren. But useful as he was to the creation of a 
powerful sentiment for union and of a hostility to 
the schemes of a paternal government, it is clear 
that in those qualities of steady wisdom, foresight, 



464 MARTIN VAN BUREN 

patience, which of right belong to the chief magis. 
tracy of a republic, he was far inferior to his less 
pictm-esque and less forceful successor. The first 
Adams, a man of very superior parts, competent 
and singularly patriotic, was deep in too many 
personal collisions within and without his party, 
and his presidency incurred too complete and last- 
ing, and it must be added, too just a popular con- 
demnation, to permit it high rank, though very 
certainly he belonged among neither the mediocri- 
ties nor the accidents of the White House. 

If to the highest rank of American presidents 
be assigned Washington, and if after him in it 
come Jefferson and perhaps Lincoln (though more 
than a quarter of a century must go to make 
the enduring measure of his fame), the second 
rank would seem to include Madison, the younger 
Adams, and Van Buren. Between the first and 
the last of these, the second of them, as has been 
said, saw much resemblance. But if Madison had 
a mellower mind, more obedient to the exigencies 
of the time and of a wider scholarship, Van Buren 
had a firmer and more direct courage, a steadier 
loyalty to his political creed, and far greater reso- 
lution and efficiency in the performance of execu- 
tive duties. If one were to imitate Plutarch in 
behalf of John Quincy Adams and Van Buren, he 
would need largely to compare their rival political 
creeds. But leaving these, it will not be unjust to 
say that in virile and indomitable continuance of 
moral purpose after official power had let go its 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 4G5 

trammels, and when the harassments and feebleness 
of age were inexorable, and though the heavens 
were to fall, the younger Adams was the greater ; 
that in executive success they were closely together 
in a high rank ; but that in skill and power of 
political leadership, in breadth of political purpose, 
in freedom from political vagaries, in personal 
generosity and political loyalty. Van Buren was 
easily the greater man. 

Van Buren did not have the massive and forcible 
eloquence of Webster, or the more captivating 
though fleeting speech of CLiy, or the delightful 
warmth of the latter's leadership, or the strength 
and glory which their very persons and careers 
gave to American nationality. But in the per- 
sistent and fruitful adherence to a political creed 
fitted to the time and to the genius of the American 
people, in that noble art which gathers and binds 
to one another and to a creed the elements of a 
political party, the art which disciplines and guides 
the party, when formed, to clear and definite pur- 
poses, without wavering and without weakness or 
demagogy. Van Buren was a greater master than 
either of those men, in many things more interest- 
ing as they were. In this exalted art of the politi- 
cian, this consummate art of the statesman. Van 
Buren was close to the greatest of American party 
leaders, close to Jefferson and to Hamilton. 

In his very last years the stir and rumbling of 
war left Van Buren in quiet recollection and anx- 
ious loyalty at Linden wald. As his growing ill- 



me MARTIN VAN BUREN 

ness now and then spared him moments of ease, 
his mind must sometimes have turned back to the 
steps of his career, senator of his State, senator of 
the United States, governor, first cabinet minister, 
foreign envo}^ vice-president, and president. There 
must again have soundetl in his ears the hardly 
remembered jargon of Lewisites and Burrites, 
Clintonians and Livingstonians, Republicans and 
Federalists, Bucktails and Jacksonians and National 
Republicans, Democrats and Whigs, Loco-focos 
and Conservatives, Barnburners and Hunkers. 
There must rapidly though dimly have shifted 
before him the long series of his struggles, — strug- 
gles over the second war with England, over inter- 
nal improvements, the Bank, nullification, the di- 
vorce of bank and state, the resistance to slaver}'' 
extension. Through them all there had run, and 
this at least his memory clearly recalled, the 
one strong faith of his politics and statesmanship. 
In all his labors of office, in all his multifarious 
strifes, he never faltered in upholding the Union. 
But not less firmly would this true disciple of Jef- 
ferson restrain the activities of the federal govern- 
ment. Whatever wisdom, whatever integrity of 
purpose might belong to ministers and legislators 
at Washington, — though the strength of the United 
States might be theirs, and though they were pano- 
plied in the august prestige rightly ascribed by 
American patriotism to that sovereign title of our 
nation, — still Van Buren was resolute that they 
should not do for the people what the States or the 



HIS PLACE IN HISTORY 467 

people themselves could do as well. To liis eyes 
there was clear and luidimined from the beginning 
to the close of his career, the idea of government 
as an instrument of useful public service, rather 
than an object of superstitious veneration, the idea 
but two years after his death clothed with memo- 
rable words by a master in brief speech, the demo- 
cratic idea of a " government of the people, by the 
people, for the people." 



INDEX 



ii.BOLiTiONiST3, their position in soci- 
ety, 2G9 ; their doctrines, 269, 270 ; 
petition Congress against slavery, 
271 ; circulate anti-slavery litera- 
ture in South, 275; denounced in 
Democratic Convention of 1840, 
379 ; also by Harrison, 381, 382 ; 
their eifect on sentiment before 
1840, 403 ; do not alfect public men, 
437 ; their viewr of slavery situation 
correct, 438. 

Adams, Charles Francis, presides at 
Buffalo Convention, 427 ; nomina- 
ted for vice-president, 429. 

Idams, John, his foreign policy com- 
pared by Van Bnren to John Q. 
Adams's, 127-129; history of his 
administration used to discredit 
that of his son, 145-1-47, 386; infe- 
rior to Van Buren in statesman- 
ship, 464. 

Adams, John Quincy, supports Jeffer- 
son and Madison's foreign policy, 
59 ; in peace negotiations, 63 ; ac- 
quires Florida for United States, 
88 ; favors Missouri Compromise, 
93; favors tariff of 1824, 103; atti- 
tude of Van Buren tovs^ards, as can- 
didate, 107 ; his opinion of Van 
Buren, 107 ; the natural choice of 
New York Republicans, 109 ; elected 
president, 115, 116; welcomed by 
Van Buren upon inauguration, 117 ; 
his view of factious nature of Van 
Buren's opposition, 119; in reality 
creates division by his messages 
and policy, 120, 121 ; urges inter- 
nal improvements, ignores consti- 
tutional questions, 121, 122; urges 
Panama Congress, 122, 124, 126: 
later uses Van Buren's own parlia- 
mentary methods, 123 ; his opinion 



of Van Buren's character, 126 ; £.> 
tack of Van Buren upon, as imitatoi 
of his father, 127 ; realizes consoli- 
dation of opposing elements, 130; 
his constitutional views attacked 
by Van Buren, 132 ; his disposal of 
patronage, 139 ; attiicked by Van 
Buren as outdoing his father in en- 
croachments on Constitution, 146; 
his position as party leader iu 1828, 
153, 154 ; comments of Jefferson on, 
154; visited by Van Buven, 158; 
compares him to Aaron Burr, 158 ; 
denounces opposition as uuworthy, 
159 ; his position erronewis, 161 ; 
his principles, not his character, 
the real issue, 161 ; slandered iu 
1828, 163; fairly criticised for his 
coalition with Clay, 163; connected 
with anti-Masonic party, 167, 245 ; 
defends Jackson in Monroe's cabi- 
net, 185 ; on causes for McLean's 
removal from postmastership, 207 ; 
his appointees his own and Clay's 
followers, 213 ; his action regarding 
trade with British West Indies, 
218, 219; becomes an anti-slavery 
leader, 273; opposes abolition in 
the District of Columbia, 274; op- 
timism of his message of 1827, 288 ; 
on banking situation in 1837,295; 
considers specie circular principal 
cause of panic, 335 ; urges a na- 
tional bank, 335, 336; votes for 
fourth installment of surplus, 338 ; 
denounces American claims on 
Mexico as a plot to annex Texas, 360: 
his coarse on " gag " rule no more 
reasonable than Van Buren'-s, 38:* ,' 
as president, presses American claim 
to fugitive slaves, 381 ; considers 
Van Buren's politeness to be hype 



470 



INDEX 



crisy, 395, 396, 451 ; on Harrison's 
ability, 401 ; his death, 429 ; com- 
parison with Van Buren, 404, 405. 

Alamo, defense of, 357, 358. 

" Albany Argus," interest of Van 
Buren in, 191, 192. 

Albany Regency, its membership and 
character, 111, 112; its high ability 
and integrity, 112 ; its end, 192 n. 

Allen, Peter, his contested election in 
1816, 04. 

Ambrister, Richard, executed by Jack- 
son, 186. 

Ames, Fisher, uses phrase " second 
thought of the people," 458 n. 

Anti-Masons, in New York election of 
1828, 106 ; rise and popularity of, 
167 ; their importance in 1832, 245 ; 
unite with Whigs in New York, 
245 ; nominate an electoral ticket, 
245, 246. 

Arbuthnot, execution of, 186. 

Armstrong, General John, replaced 
as United States senator bj" De 
Witt Clinton, 51. 

Auckland, Lord, his remark to Van 
Buren, 228. 

Bancroft, GEORaE, secretary of navy, 
362 ; at Democratic Convention of 
1844, 408. 

Bank of United States, incorporation 
condemned as unconstitutional by 
Van Buren, 145 ; attack upon, be- 
gun by Jackson, 203 ; removal of 
deposits, 249 - 251 ; not likely to 
have prevented crisis of 1837, 296, 
297 ; demanded by Whigs, 334, 335 ; 
slow to resume specie payments, 
348, 349 ; its transactions with 
Pennsylvania, 370 ; suspends pay- 
ments in 1839, 371 ; collapses again 
in 1841, 393 ; bill to re-charter, ve- 
toed by Tyler, 402. 

Barbour, Philip P., declares Cumber- 
land road bill does not involve 
question of internal improvements, 
95 ; candidate for vice-presidency 
in 1831, 237, 239 ; at Whig conven- 
tion of 1839, 378. 

Barnburners, origin of, 415 ; their 
leader?-, 415 ; attempts of Polk to 
educate, 415, 416 ; at first, control 



Democratic party in New York, 
416, 417 ; support Wilmot Proviso, 
417 ; alienated from Polk, 417 ; de- 
feated by Hunkers, 418; secede in 
1847, 419 ; announce intention to 
support no candidate not in favor 
of Wilmot Proviso, 419 ; cause de- 
feat of Hunkers in election of 1847, 
422 ; hold convention at Utica in 
1847, 423, 424 ; issue address, 424 ; 
at national convention, 424 ; their 
Utica convention of 1848, 425 ; no- 
minate Van Buren for president, 
427 ; join Free Soil party at Buffalo 
convention, 427 ; nominate Dix for 
governor, 429 ; rejoin Democratic 
party, 435. 

Barry, William T., succeeds McLean 
as postmaster-general, 179 ; helps 
Blair to establish a Jacksonian 
paper, 191 ; minister to Spain, 199. 

Barton, David, votes for Panama 
Congress, 131. 

Beardsley, Samuel, attorney-general 
of New York, 23. 

Beecher, Henry Ward, anti-slavery 
leader, 273. 

Bell, John, defeated for speakership 
of House, 337. 

Bennett, James Gordon, asks aid from 
Van Buren ui return for newspaper 
support, 192 ; upon refusal, becomes 
Van Buren's enemy, 193. 

Benton, Thomas H., on Van Buren's 
classification act, 02 ; describes Van 
Buren's friendship with King, 72 ; 
enters Senate, his friendship with 
Van Buren, 94 ; votes against inter- 
nal improvements, 95 ; votes for 
tariff of 1824, 99; on Van Buren's 
advocacy of tariff, 102 ; supports 
Van Buren's proposed amendment 
to electoral articles in Constitu- 
tion, 106 ; on topographical surveys, 
117 ; votes for Cumberland road, 
117; votes for occupation of Ore- 
gon, 117; not always in harmony 
with Van Buren, 131 ; his report on 
reduction of executive patronage, 
137-139 ; urges abolition of salt 
duty, 140 ; opposes a naval aca» 
demy, 140 ; again votes for Cum- 
berland road, 142 ; votes for tai'id 



INDEX 



471 



of 1828, 142; praises Giles, 154; 
considers Hiyiie moutlipiece of Cal- 
houn, 188; describes plan of Cal- 
hovin's friends to cry down Van 
Bviren, 191 ; condemns system of 
removals, 211 ; denies large num- 
bers of removals, 211 ; defends 
Jackson, 212; after Van Buren's 
rejection as minister, predicts his 
election as vice-president, 234; de- 
scribes Van Buren's reception of 
Clay's "distress ■' appeal, 253; on 
Wliite's presidential ambition, 257 ; 
moves expunging resolutions, 2G4 ; 
votes against bill to exclude anti- 
slavery matter from mail, in order 
to defy slaveholders, 276 ; describes 
scheme to force Van Buren to vote 
on bill to prohibit anti-slavery mat- 
ter in the mails, 277 ; on Van Bu- 
ren's motives for supporting it, 277 ; 
predicts to Van Buren a financial 
paxiic, 28G ; says Van Buren's friends 
urged Jackson to approve distribu- 
tion of surplus, 302 ; his advice in 
speakership contest of 1839, 37G ; 
accuses Whigs of fraud in 1840, 391 ; 
declares for Van Buren's renomi- 
natlon in 1844, 399 ; votes against 
Texas treaty, 413 ; considers Wil- 
iixOt Proviso unnecessary, 418 ; 
praised by Utica convention of 
1847, 424 ; considers South to be 
merely blusternig, 437 ; his friend- 
ship for Van Buren, 455. 

Berrien, John M., attorney-general, 
179 ; made to resign, 199. 

Biddle, Nicholas, not so important to 
country as his friends assumed, 254 ; 
not the man to have prevented 
panic of 1837, 29G, 21)8 ; calls on Van 
Buren, 319. 

Bidwell, Marshall S., leader of popu- 
lar party in Upper Canada, 352. 

Birney, James G., vote for, in New 
York, 413 ; defeats Clay, 413. 

Blair, Francis P., his character, es- 
tablishes "Globe," 191; enters 
kitchen cabinet, 193 ; opposes nul- 
lification and the bank, 193 ; re- 
fusal of Van Buren to aid, 194 ; in 
connection with Kendall f-uggests 
removal of deposits, 251, 252; sup- 



ports hard money and loses House 
printing, 338. 

Bouligny, Dominique, votes for Pan- 
ama congress, 131. 

Branch, John, secretary of navy, 179 ; 
forced out of cabinet, 199. 

British West Indies, negotiations over 
trade rights in, 217-222. 

Bronson, Greene C, attorney-general 
of New York, 23. 

Brougham, Lord, attacks Durham, 
35G. 

Bryant, William CuUen, denounces 
Loco-focos, 344 ; issues circular op- 
posing Texas, but supporting Polk, 
415. 

Buchanan, James, supported by Van 
Buren in 185G, 3, 441 ; declines offer 
of attorney-generalship, 393 ; letter 
of Letcher to, on Polk's nomina- 
tion, 412 ; supports compromise of 
1850, 437 ; letter of Van Buren fa- 
voring, 442-444 ; praised mildly by 
Van Buren, 444 ; condemned by 
Van Buren for accepting Dred Scott 
decision, 44G ; his policy in 1861, 
condemned by Van Buren, 447 , in- 
ferior to Van Buren in ability, 4o3. 

Bucktails, faction of New York De- 
mocracy, 67 ; originate in personal 
feuds, 67 ; proscribed by Clintoni- 
ans, 67 ; support Rufus King for 
senator against Clintonians, G9 ; 
joined by a few Federalists, 73 ; 
gain election of 1820, 73 ; in Con- 
gress, vote against a Clintonian 
speaker, 7G ; elect Van Buren to 
Senate, 76 ; try to destroy Clinton's 
power by removing fi-om office of 
canal commissioner, 109 ; oppose 
bill for election of electors by peo- 
ple, 111 ; secure its defeat in legis- 
lature, 113 ; punished by defeat m 
election of 1824, 113; oppose Clin- 
ton for reelection in 1826, 147, 148. 
(See Democratic party of New 
York.) 

Burr, Aaron, his standing in 1802, 
17 ; acquaintance with Van Buren, 
17, 18 ; used as a bugbear in Ameri- 
can politics, 18 ; attorney-geneiai 
of Ntew York, 23 ; in Medcef Eden 
case, 29 ; calls Van Buren to aid 



472 



INDEX 



before court of errors, 29 ; in- 
trigues with Federalists in electiou 
of 1801, 38; his standing in Repub- 
lican party in 18C"3, 42, 43 ; endea- 
vors to gain governorship with Fed- 
eralist aid, 43 ; defeated, his poli- 
tical career closed, 44 ; his friends 
turned out of office, 51 ; compared 
by Adams to Van Buren, 158. 

Butler, Benjamin F., contrasts Van 
Buren and Williams as lawyers, 20 ; 
enters partnership with Van Buren, 
his character, 24 ; high opinion of 
Van Buren's legal ability, 31 ; on 
Van Buren's attitude toward Mad- 
ison, 59 ; describes arrogance of 
Judge Spencer, S4 ; on Van Buren's 
attitude toward tariff, 102 ; mem- 
ber of Albany Regency, 111, 112 ; 
succeeds Taney as attorney-general, 
255 ; continues in office under Van 
Buren, 283 ; resigns, 303 ; visits 
Jackson in Van Buren's interest, 
407 ; protests against adoption of 
two-thirds rule by convention of 
1844, 408, 409 ; reads letter from 
Van Buren authorizing withdrawal 
of his name, 411 ; leads Banjburners, 
415 ; declines Polk's offer of War 
Department, 416 ; at Utica conven- 
tion of 1848, 425 ; reports resolutions 
at Buffalo convention, 427 ; his 
friendship for Van Buren, 455. 

Butler, William Allen, on Van Buren's 
serenity, 451 ; on his father's affec- 
tion for Van Buren, 455. 

Calhoun, John C, secretary of war, 
94 ; vice - president, 131 ; inferior 
to Van Buren as party leader, 150 ; 
his attitude in campaign of 1828, 
153 ; dislike of Crawford for, 157 ; 
represented by Ingham, Branch, 
and Berrien in Jackson's cabinet, 
179 ; his rivalry with Van Buren 
begins, 179 ; liis public career and 
character, ISO ; reasons for his de- 
feat by Van Buren, ISO; tries to 
prevent Van Buren's appointment to 
State Department, ISO ; connection 
with Eaton affair, 182, 184 ; wishes 
to succeed Jackson in 1S32. 184 ; 
dislike of Jackson for, ISo ; his con- 



demnation of Jackson in Monroe's 
cabinet, 1S5 ; betrayed by Craw, 
ford, 185, 186 ; answers Jackson's 
demand for an explanation, 186 ; 
his toast in reply to Jackson's Union 
sentiment, 188 ; declaration of Jack- 
son against him as successor, 190 ; 
publislies Seminole correspondence, 
191 ; attacked by " Globe," 191 ; 
defeats Van Buren's nomination by 
casting vote, 233, 234 ; his secession 
weakens Jacksonian party, 245; 
describes Democratic party as held 
together only by desire for spoils, 
261 ; anxious to make Van Buren 
vote on bill to exclude anti-slavery 
matter from mail, 277 ; rejoins De- 
mocratic partj', 340 ; liis reasons, 
340, 341 ; altercation witli Clay in 
Senate, 346 , votes against sub- 
treasury bill, 346 ; does not bring 
his followers back to support of 
Van Buren, 387 ; his opinion of 
Van Buren quoted by Clay, 396 ; 
in Texas intrigue, 408 ; compared by 
Young to Nero, 410 ; his slavery 
doctrines expounded by Supreme 
Court, 441. 

Cambreleng, Churchill C, with Van 
Buren visits Southern States, 157 ; 
presides over Bai'nburuer Herkimer 
convention, 419 ; Van Buren's crit- 
icism of, 452. 

Cameron, Simon, at Democratic con- 
vention of 1840, 379. 

Canada, government of, S50 ; popular 
discontent and parliamentary strug- 
gles in, 351 ; insurrections in, during 
1837, 352 ; governorsliip of Head, 
352, 353 ; suppression of insurrec- 
tions in, 353; attempts of Mackenzie 
to invade, 353, 354 ; the Caroline af- 
fair, 354 ; attempts of Van Buren 
to prevent filibustering in, 355 ; 
pacified by Lord Durham, 355, 356 ; 
becomes loyal, 356. 

Cass, Lewis, secretary of war, 199; 
minister to France, 283 ; liis " Nich- 
olson letter." 422 ; considered a 
doughface, 423 ; nominated for pre- 
sidency, 424 ; refusal of Van Bu' 
ren to support, on account of his 
pro-slavery position, 426 ; defeated 



INDEX 



473 



in 1848, 431 ; accepts compromise 
of 1850, 437. 

Chaiubei-s, Henry, votes for Panama 
congress, 131. 

Chandler, John, votes against Pan- 
ama congress, 131. 

Charles X., urged by Jackson to se- 
cure payment of American claims, 
21G. 

Chase, Salmon P., at Buffalo conven- 
tion, 427. 

Cherokee Indians, removed from Geor- 
gia, 203. 

Chevalier, Michel, compares Van Bii- 
ren to Talleyrand, 451. 

Civil service of United States, Demo- 
cratic dread of executive power 
over, 137, 138; proposal to reor- 
ganize, 138-140. 

Clay, Henry, his connection with 
Burr, 18 ; contrasted with Van Bu- 
ren in debate, 21 ; connection with 
Missouri Compromise, 90 ; absent 
from Congress in 1821, 94; calls 
protection the " American system," 
1'9 ; loses chance for pi-esidency 
througli action of New York, 115 ; 
his action in election of Adams jus- 
tified, IIG; shares with Adams the 
responsibility of creating division in 
1825, 122 ; vote in Senate on con- 
firmation of his nomination, 123 ; 
urges Panama congress, 124, 125 ; 
his opposition to Monroe, 159 ; his 
policy inevitably brings on opposi- 
tion, IGO ; opposes Van Buren's 
confirmation as minister to Eng- 
land, 230 ; denounces Van Buren 
for sycophancy, 231 ; nominated for 
presidency by Whigs, 240 ; by Young 
Men's convention, 24G ; defeated in 
1832, 248 ; appeals to Van Buren to 
intercede with Jackson in behalf of 
the bank, 253 ; his attack on Jack- 
son's land bill veto, 2G3j condemns 
abolitionists, 2G9 ; condennis bill to 
exclude anti-slavery matter from 
mails, 27G ; opposes reduction of 
taxation, 299 ; on real nature of de- 
posit of surplus, 300; denounces 
Van Buren's policy in 1837, 337; 
demands a national bank, 337 ; in- 
sists on paymeL't of fourth install- 



ment of surplus, 338 ; votes against 
treasury notes, 339 ; taunts Cal- 
houn with joining Van Buren, 34G ; 
opposes preemption bill, 357 ; mis- 
led by popular demonstrations, 309 ; 
clieated out of nomination in 1839, 
378; on campaign of 1840, 382; 
holds Van Buren responsible for 
panic, 385 ; on Van Buren's personal 
agreeableness, 390, 397 ; visited by 
Van Buren, 400 ; discusses Texas 
question with him, 400 ; his posi- 
tion on slavery, 403 ; defeated ia 
1844 by Polk, owing to Bimey's 
candidacy, 412, 413 ; writes letter 
against Texas annexation, 413 ; later 
bids for pro-slavery vote, 413 ; dis- 
carded for Taylor in 1848, 430; 
brings about compromise of 1850, 
435, 437 ; inferior to Van Buren in 
real leadership, 4G5. 

Clayton, John M., votes for Panama 
congress, 131. 

Clinton, De Witt, in New York coun- 
cil of appointment of 1801, 48 ; in- 
troduces and advocates *■' spoils sys- 
tem," 49, 50 ; becomes United 
States senator, 51 ; duel with Swart- 
wout, 51 ; justification of his party 
proscription, 50 ; supported by Van 
Buren in 1812, 58; his character, 
nominated for president against 
Madison, 58; breaks relations with 
Van Buren, 63, 04 ; removed from 
mayoralty of New York, C4 ; se- 
cures passage of law establishing 
Erie Canal, G5 ; supported in this 
by Van Buren, 65; thanks Van Bu- 
ren, 66 ; elected governor, GG ; re- 
elected in 1820, 73; accuses Mon- 
roe's administration of interfering 
in state election, 75 ; supports Jack- 
son, 109, 150 ; complimented by 
Jackson, 109 ; his position in New 
York politics as canal connnissioner, 
109 ; removed by enemies in legis- 
lature, 110 ; regains popularity, 
elected governor. 110; his death, 
his character, 147 ; eulogy of Van 
Buren upon, 148. 

Clinton, Geqrge, his separatist atti- 
tude toward Constitution, 5 ; leads 
Republican party in New York, 40 i 



474 



INDEX 



his career as governor of New 
York, 40 ; declines nomination in 
1795, 41; reelected in 1801, 41; 
later aspirations, 41 ; supplants 
Burr in vice-presidency, 43 ; at- 
tacked by Van Ness, 43 ; leads fac- 
tion of Republicans, 44 ; his friends 
excluded by Hamilton from federal 
offices, 4G ; presides over council of 
appointment of 1801, 48, 49; pro- 
tests against proscription of Feder- 
alists, 50. 

Clintonians, faction of New York 
Democrats, 40, 41 ; quarrel with 
Livingstonians, 44 ; control regu- 
lar party caucus, 45 ; gain control 
of council of appointment, 45 ; re- 
move Livingstonians from office, 
51 ; lose and regain offices, 52 ; nom- 
inate and cast New York electoral 
vote for De Witt Clinton, 58 ; favor 
Erie Canal, Go ; opposed by Bucktail 
faction, G7 ; joined by majority of 
Federalists, 73 ; defeated in election 
of IS'20, 73 ; oppose election of Van 
Buren to Senate, 7G ; join Bucktails 
in Democratic party, 158. 

Cobb, Thomas W., laments absence of 
principles in campaign of 1824, 108. 

Coddington, , refusal of Van Bu- 
ren to appoint to office, 173. 

Coleman, William, friend of Hamil- 
ton, removed from office by Repub- 
licans, 50. 

Comet case, urged by Van Buren in 
England, 229. 

Compromise of 1850, its effect on 
Northern Democrats, 435 ; its fu- 
tility, 435 ; defended by John Van 
Buren, 439, 440. 

Constitution, federal, circumstances 
preceding its formation, 4 ; its de- 
velopment by Federalists, 4, 5 ; 
and internal improvements, 96, 132, 
201 ; proposal of Van Buren to 
amend in this respect, 97, 98 ; and 
protection, 101 ; proposal of Van 
Buren to amend in election of pre- 
sident by electors, 104-100, 133, 
134 ; attitude of Adams concerning, 
causes division of parties, 121, 122 ; 
in relation to Panama congress, 
120 ; the bank, 145, 203 ; distribu. 



tion of surplus, 2G5 ; its relation to 
slavery in the States, 272 ; to sla- 
very in Territories, 42G, 444 ; in 
Dred Scott case, 441. 

Constitutional convention of New 
York, its membership, 77 ; its work, 
77 ; debate on necessity of a landed 
suffrage, 77-80 ; on appointments 
to office, 81, 82; abolishes council 
of revision, 82, 84 ; removes judges 
from office, 85. 

Crawford, William H., supported by 
New York Republicans against Mon- 
roe in 181G, 75; the "regular" 
candidate of party in 1824, 94,95; 
supported by Van Buren, 95 ; op- 
poses tariff of 1824, 103 ; his caucus 
nomination denounced by King, 105 ; 
reasons for his popularity, his ca- 
reer, 106, 107 ; nominated by cau- 
cus, 114; his connection with four- 
year-term act, 139 ; leaves public 
life, 157 ; his followers join Jack- 
son's, 157 ; visited by Van Buren, 
157 ; willing to support Jackson, 
but not Calhoun, 157 ; supports 
Jackson against Calhoun in Mon- 
roe's cabinet, 185 ; describes Cal- 
houn's attitude to Jackson, 186. 

Crockett, Davy, his scurrilous lif.? of 
Van Buren, 256 ; his defense of the 
Alamo, 358. 

Croswell, Edwin, member of Albany 
Regency, 111. 

Cumberland road, Monroe's veto of 
bill to erect toll-gates upon, 95; 
further debates upon, 96, 132. 

Cushing, Caleb, denounces Van Bu- 
ren's policy in 1837, 336. 

Dade, Major Francis, massacred by 
Seminoles, 366. 

Dallas, George M., nominated for 
vice-president, 411. 

Debt, imprisonment for, attempts tc 
abolish, 26, 27, 98, 116, 142. 

Democratic party, its relations with 
Van Buren, 2 ; in recent years loses 
Jeffer.sonian ideals, 12 ; share of Van 
Buren in forming, 118, 119; its op- 
position to Adams justifiable, 119; 
caused by Adams's loose constitu* 
tional policy, 121, 122 ; its poucj 



INDEX 



475 



not factious, 123 ; created in debate 
on Panama congress, 130, 131 ; 
drilled by Van Biu-en in opposing 
internal improvements, 131, 132, 
142 ; its principles stated by Van 
Buren, 145, 153; does not yet 
clearly hold them, 154 ; united by 
Jackson's personality, 155 ; ditter- 
ent elements in, liarniouized by Van 
Buren, 157 ; its opposition to Adams 
and Clay not causeless, but praise- 
worthy, 159-lGl ; significance of its 
victory, 1G2 ; erroneous descrip- 
tions of its administration, 177, 178 ; 
discussion in, over succession to 
Jackson, 185 ; break in, between 
Calhoun and Van Buren, 101 ; Van 
Buren' s resignation from State De- 
partment in order not to hurt, 195 ; 
demands offices, 208-212 ; enraged 
at rejection of Van Buren's nomi- 
nation, 234 ; rejects desire of New 
York to elect him governor, 236; 
meets in national convention of 1832, 
237 ; not forced to adopt Van Bu- 
ren, 237, 238; requires two-thirds 
majority to nominate, 238 ; nomi- 
nates Van Buren for vice-presi- 
dency, 239 ; avoids adopting a plat- 
form, 239 ; fears to alienate believ- 
ers in tariff and internal improve- 
ments, 240 ; Van Buren's nomina- 
tion the natural result of circum- 
stances, 240, 241 ; successful in 
election of 1832, 247, 248 ; secession 
of Southwestern members from, 
256, 257 ; holds its national conven- 
tion in 1835, 257 ; action of partj' in 
calling convention defended, 258, 
259 ; adopts two-thirds rule, 259 ; 
nominates Van Buren and Rives, 
259 ; Southwestern members of, no- 
minate White and Tyler, 260 ; elects 
Van Buren, 279, 280 ; members of, 
urge Jackson to approve distribu- 
tion bill, 302 ; upholds specie cir- 
cular during panic. 322, 323 ; de- 
feated in elections of 1837. 337, 342 • 
members of, desert independent 
treasury bill, 338 ; rejoined by Cal- 
houn, 340, 341 : faction of, joins 
Whigs in opposing Van Buren, 347 ; 
regains ground in election of 1838, 



362, 363 ; its national convention 
despondent, 379 ; its principles, 
379 ; declares against abolitioui.sts, 

379 ; its address to the people, 379, 

380 ; cried down in election of 1840, 
386; badly defeated in 1840, 390, 
391; significance of defeat, 399; 
bound to continue support of Van 
Buren, 399, 401 ; its nomination de- 
sired by Tyler, 402 ; its delegates to 
national convention instructed to 
nominate Van Buren, 404 ; majority 
of, desires annexation of Texas, 405 ; 
national convention of, 408-411 ; 
debate in, between Southern and 
Northern members, 408, 409 ; adopts 
two-thirds rule, 409 ; nominates 
Polk over Van Buren, 410, 411 ; suct 
cessful in election, 412, 413; com- 
pliments Van Buren on honorable 
retirement, 414 ; at national cun- 
vention of 1848 wishes to inc?ude 
both New York factions, 424 ; 
nominates Cass, 424 ; its rage at 
Free-soil secession, 429, 430 ; de- 
feated in election, 432 ; impossibii* 
ity of its pardoning Van Buren, 
434 ; nominates Pierce, 439 ; nomi- 
nates Buchanan, 441. 

Democratic party, in New York, sup- 
ports Jackson, 158; nominates and 
elects Van Buren governor, 166 ; 
sends address to Jackson on Van 
Buren's rejection by Senate as min- 
ister to England, 234 ; proposes to 
elect Van Buren governor or send 
him to Senate, 236 ; Loco-foco fac- 
tion in, 342-344 ; on reconciliation 
with Loco-focos, name transferred 
to whole party, 344, 345 ; offers For- 
rest nomination to Congress, 361 ; 
favors literary men, 361, 362; loses 
ground in elections of 1838, 363 ; 
welcomes Van Buren's visit, 369 ; 
continues, in 1839, to regain ground, 
370 ; its action in convention of 
1844, 408-411; lield in support of 
Polk by Van Buren and Wright, 
412, 413 ; divides into Hunkers and 
Barnburners, 415-425 ; reunited in 
1849-ia50, 435. 

Denny, Thomas, with Henry Parrish 
and others, on committee of New 



476 



INDEX 



York merchants to remonstrate 
against specie circular, 317. 

Derbj', Earl of, compared as parlia- 
meutarian to Van Buren, 123. 

De Tocqueville, Alexis de, on lawyers 
ill America, 35. 

Dickerson, Mahlon, condemns too 
much diplomacy, 129 ; votes against 
Panama congress, 131 ; supports 
tariff of 1828, 1-13 ; secretary of navy 
under V^an Buren, 283 ; resigns, 3G0. 

Dickinson, Daniel S., at Democratic 
Convention of 1844, 408, 411 ; leads 
Hunkers, 415; uses federal patron- 
age against Barnburners, 417 ; sug- 
gests idea of squatter sovereignty, 
422 ; supports compromise of 1850, 
437. 

Diplomatic history, conduct of State 
Department by Van Buren, 215 ; 
negotiations leading to payment of 
French spoliation claims, 21G ; pay- 
ment of Danish spoliation claims, 
217 ; other commercial treaties, 217 ; 
negotiations relative to British 
West India trade, 217-222; Gal- 
latin's mission to England, 219 ; 
American claims abandoned by Van 
Buren, 220 ; mutual concessions 
open trade, 222 ; Van Buren's mis- 
sion to England, 224-228 ; rejection 
of Texas treaty, 413. 

Disraeli, Benjamin, his Jingo policy 
compared to Clay's and Adams's, 
126. 

District of Columbia, question of abo- 
lition of slavery in, raised, 272, 273 ; 
general understanding that this was 
impossible, 273, 274; opinion of 
Van Buren concerning, 274, 275. 
Dix, John A., his desire to be one of 
Albany Regency, 112 ; at Demo- 
cratic convention of 1840, 379 ; 
leads Barnburners, 415 ; praised by 
Utica convention of 1847, 423 ; ac- 
cepts Free-soil nomination for gov- 
ernor, 429 ; his friendship for Van 
Buren, 456. 
Dix, Dr. Morgan, describes honesty 

of Albany Regency, 112. 
Dodge, Henry, nominated by Barn- 
burners for vice-presidency, 427 ; 
declines to abandon Cass, 427. 



Douglas, Stephen A., supports com. 
promise of 1850, 437. 

Dudley, Charles E., member of Albany 
Regency, 111 ; offers to surrender 
seat in Senate to Van Buren, 236. 

Duer, John, refusal of Van Buren to 
secure his removal from office, 209. 

Duer, William, joins Bucktail Repub- 
licans, 73. 

Durham, Earl of, sent to Canada, his 
character, 355 ; his successful rule, 
355; recalled, 356 ; declines invita- 
tion to visit Wasliington, 356. 

Dutch, in New York, Americanized 
in eighteenth century, 14, 

Eaton, John H., supports tariff of 
1828, 143 ; secretary of war, 179 ; 
marries Peggy Timberlake, 181 ; re- 
peats remarks about Calhoun to 
Jackson, 186 ; resigns secretary- 
ship, 199 ; succeeds Barry as min- 
ister to Spain, 199 ; opposes Van 
Buren in 1840, 387. 

Eaton, Mrs. " Peggy," scandals con- 
cerning, 181 ; upheld by Jackson, 
181, 182; ostracized by Washington 
society, 182 ; treated politely by 
Van Buren, 183, 184. 

Eden, Joseph, in suit for Medcef 
Eden's property, 28. 

Eden, Medcef, suit concerning his 
will, 28-30. 

Edmonds, John W., issues circular 
opposing Texas but supporting Polk, 
415. 

Election of 1824, nominations for, dis- 
cussed in Senate, 105 ; candidates 
for, 100-109 ; lack of principles in, 
108 ; nomination of Crawford by 
caucus, 114; action of Adams men 
in New York tlirows out Clay, 115 ; 
discussion of outcome of vote in 
House, 116 ; its result used in 1828 
to condemn Adams, 164. 

Election of 1828, a legitimate canvass, 
153 ; broad principles at stake in, 
153, 154 ; propriety of opposition to 
Adams and Clay, 159, 160; founds 
principles of both parties until pre- 
sent day, 161 ; saves country from 
dangers of centralization, 162 ; slan- 
derous character of, 162, 163 ; the 



INDEX 



477 



cry of corrupt bargain, 103 ; the 
" deiiaos krateo " cry legitimate, 
](!r>, IGG. 

Ellinaker, Amos, nominated for vice- 
president by anti-Masons, '24(). 

Ely, Kev. Dr. Ezra S., bitter letter of 
Jackson to, on clergy, 181. 

Emmett, Thomas Addis, attorney-gen- 
eral of New York, 23. 

England, lawyers not leaders in, 33 ; 
political prejudice in, against law- 
yers, 33 ; demands land-holding class 
as leaders, 34 ; considers offices as 
property, 55 ; unpopularity of poli- 
tical coalitions in, 1 IG, 1G4 ; attempts 
to exclude Americans from trade 
with West Indies, 217, 218; offers 

' trade upon conditions, 218 ; on fail- 
ure of United States to comply, pro- 
hibits trade, 218 ; counter-claims of 
United States against, 219 ; claims 
against, abuidoned by Van Buren, 
210, 222 ; agrees to reciprocal con- 
cessions, 222 ; Van Buren minister 
to, 224 ; popularity of Irving in, 225 ; 
social life of Van Buren in, 22G-228; 
its indifference to colonial griev- 
ances, 350 ; votes to tax Canada 
without reference to colonial legis- 
latures, 351 ; sends Durham to re- 
medy grievances, 356 ; recalls him, 
356 ; second money stringency in, 
371. 

Erie Canal, agitation for, 65; favored 
by Van Buren, 65, 66. 

Federalist paety, its influence on 
development of United States gov- 
ernment, 5 ; despises common peo- 
ple, 38 ; only example of a destroyed 
party, 38 ; deserves its fate, 38, 39 ; 
continues to struggle in New York, 
39 ; aids Burr against Republicans, 
43 ; supports Lewis against Clinton- 
iaus, 44 ; begins spoils system in 
New York, 47 ; aids Livingstonians 
to turn out Clintonian officers, 51, 
52 ; supports De Witt Clinton for 
presidsnt, 59 ; controls New York 
Assembly, 60 ; hinders war mea- 
sures, 61 ; struggles for control of 
New York legislature in 1816, 64 ; 
defeated in elections, 65 ; expires in 



1820, 72, 88 ; divi.les between Clin- 
toni.tns and Bu<!ktails, 73 ; position 
under Monroe, 89 ; its career used 
by Van Buren to discredit J. Q. 
Adams, 128, 145, 146. 

Fellows, Henry, his election ca.se in 
1816, 64. 

Fillmore, Millard, signs compromi.se 
bills, 435, 437 ; Whig candidate in 
1856, 445 ; an accidental president 
463. 

Field, David Dudley, issues circulav 
against Texas but supporting Polk, 
415 ; offers anti-slavery resolution in 
New York Democratic convention, 
418 ; reads Van Buren's letter to 
Utica convention, 425. 

Financial history, removal of deposits 
from the bank, 249-251 ; exaggerated 
results of the withdrawal, 252-254 ; 
real unwisdom of " pet bank " pol- 
icy, 254; causes of panic of 1837, 
287-31G ; financial depression after 
war of 1812, 287, 288 ; land specula- 
tions, 291-294; large foreign invest- 
ments, 293 ; discussion of " pet 
bank " policy, 295 ; not in any sense 
the cause of the panic, 295, 296; 
rapid increase of government sur- 
plus, 297 ; question of responsibility 
for speculation among politicians, 
298-302 ; refusal to reduce taxation, 
299 ; distribution of surplus, 300- 
302 ; objections of Jackson to distri- 
bution, 301, 302 ; warnings of Marcy 
and Jackson disregarded, 302, 303 ; 
specie circular, 304 ; demand for 
gold payments, 304, 305 ; nature of 
crisis of 1837 misunderstood, 305 ; 
class affected by it small in numbers, 
306 ; great mass of people unaffected , 
307 ; over-estimation of new lands, 
308, 309 ; increased luxury, 309, 310 ; 
high prices, 310, 311 ; di.scovery of 
over-valuation, 311, 312 ; collapse of 
nominal value, 313 ; folly of attempt 
to conceal collapse, 314 ; bread riots 
against high prices, 315 ; disturbance 
caused by distribution of surplus, 
315, 316 ; financial crisis begins in 
England, 316 ; failures begin in New 
York, 31G; general collapse, 317; 
specie circular held to be the cau8i« 



478 



INDEX 



317-319; suspension of specie pay- 
ments, 319, 320; general bankruptcy, 
320 ; use of token currency, 323 ; Van 
Buren's lueasage recommending in- 
dependent treasury, 327-333 ; pro- 
posed remedies of Whigs, 333-337 ; 
defeat of lirst sub-treasury bill, 337 ; 
postponement of fourth installment 
of surplus, 338 ; issue of treasury 
notes, 338, 339 ; beneficent results 
of tliese measures, 339, 340 ; pre- 
parations for resumption of specie 
payment, 342 ; defeat of second in- 
dependent treasury bill, 34G ; prac- 
tical existence of an independent 
treasury, 346 ; final passage of sub- 
treasury bill, 347, 348 ; revival of 
business, 348 ; resumption of pay- 
ments by New York banks, 348, 349 ; 
others follow, 349 ; return of confi- 
dence, 349 ; continued depression in 
South, 370 ; brief revival of land 
speculation, 371 ; renewed collapse 
of Western and Southern banks, 
371 ; final passage of sub-treasury 
bill, 377. 

Pindlay, William, votes against Pan- 
ama congress, 131. 

Flagg, Azariah C, member of Albany 
Regency, 111 ; leads Barnburners, 
415 ; his friendship for Van Buren, 
456. 

Florida, acquired in 1S19, 88 ; vote of 
Van Buren to exclude slave trade in, 
93, 94. 

Floyd, John, receives South Carolina's 
electoral vote in 1832, 248. 

Forman, Joshua, proposes safety fund 
for New York banks, 170. 

Forrest, Edwin, declines a nomination 
to Congress, 361. 

Forsyth, John, quotes Crawford's ac- 
count of Calhoun's proposal in Mon- 
roe's cabinet to punish Jackson, 185 ; 
refers Jackson to Crawford as au- 
thority, 186 ; secretary of state, 255 ; 
retained by Van Buren, 283. 

Fox, Charles James, compared to W. 
B. Giles, 154. 

France, urged by Jackson, agrees to 
pay spoliation claims, 216. 

Franklin, Benjamin, his share in effort 
for Union, 4. 



Free - soil party, loses faith in Van 
Buren, 3 ; organized at Buffalo con- 
vention. 427 ; its platform, 428 ; 
nominates Van Buren over Hale, 
428 ; analysis of its vote in 1848, 431, 
432 ; later relations of Van Buren 
with, 435; supports Hale in 1852, 
439. 

Fremont, John C, Van Buren's opin- 
ion of, 441 ; defeated in election, 445. 

" Gag ■' rule, approved by Van Buren, 
380 ; his policy justified by executive 
position, 381. 

Gallatin, Albert, nominated for vice- 
president, withdraws, 114; fails to 
settle West India trade question 
with England, 219 : agrees with Van 
Buren's position, 231. 

Garland, Hugh A., as clerk of the 
House refuses to decide status of 
New Jersey congressmen, 375 ; jus- 
tification of his action, 375, 376 ; de- 
noimced by Adams, 376 ; reelected 
clerk, 376. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, on powers 
of Congress over slavery, 272 ; h>s 
position in American history, 273. 

Georgia, nominates Van Buren for 
vice-presidency, 108 ; " Clarkite " 
faction in, abuses Van Buren, 108 ; 
its conduct in Cherokee case rightly 
upheld by Jackson, 203, 204. 

Giddings, Joshua R., anti-slavery 
leader, 273 ; at Buffalo convention, 
427. 

Giles, William B., his character, 154. 

Gilpin, Henry D., attorney-general 
under Van Buren, 393. 

Gladstone, William Ewart, his shrewd- 
ness as parliamentarian, 123 ; com- 
pared to Van Buren, 158 and n., 
457 ; fails to see any principle in- 
volved in Canadian question of 1837, 
351, 352. 

" Globe," defends Jackson, 191 ; not 
established by Van Buren, 194; 
supports hard money, loses House 
printing, 338. 

Goschen, George Joachim, his career 
shows danger of coalitions, 164. 

Gouverneur, , postmaster in New 

York city, refuses to forward ant* 



INDEX 



^^"^9 



oiaveiy papers to Charleston, South 
Carolina, 276. 

Crranger, Francis, supported for gov- 
ernor of New York by Whigs and 
Anti-Masons, 245 ; nominated for 
vice-president, 2G0. 

Grant, Ulysses S., his renominatiou in 
1872, 118. 

Greeley, Horace, prefers Taylor to Van 
Buren in l&iS, 431. 

Green, Duff, editor of "The Tele- 
graph," plans attack of Calhoun 
papers on Van Buren, 191. 

Grosvenor, Thomas P., member of 
Columbia County bar, 20. 

Grundy, Felix, attorney -general under 
Van Buren, 393. 

Gwin, Samuel, letter of Van Buren to, 
on slavery in the States, 272. 

Hale, Daniei, removed from office by 
New York Republicans, 50. 

Hale, John P., defeated for nomina- 
tion at Buffalo convention, 428 ; 
withdraws from Liberty nomina- 
tion, 431 ; Free - soil candidate in 
1852, 439. 

Hamilton, Alexander, his aristocratic 
schemes defeated in Federal con- 
vention, 5 ; his opinion in Medcef 
Eden case, 28 ; killed by Burr, 29 ; 
advises Federalists not to support 
Burr for governor, 43 ; secures ap- 
pointment of Clinton's opponents 
to federal offices in New York, 4G; 
compared as party-builder to Van 
Buren, 465. 

Hamilton, James A., joins "Buck- 
tails " in New York, 73 ; acts as 
temporary secretary of state, 177 ; 
on Calhoun's attempt to prevent 
Van Buren's appointment, 181 ; 
visits Crawford in 1828, 185; re- 
ceives letter from Forsyth describ- 
ing Calhoun's attitude toward Jack- 
son in Monroe's cabinet, 185 ; re- 
fuses to give letter to Jackson, 186 ; 
letter of Van Buren to, on Jack- 
son's principles, 200 ; aids Jackson 
in composing messages, 205 ; on 
Jackson's demand for subservience 
in associates, 206 ; letter of Van 
Buren to, on removals, 209. 



Hamilton. John C, joins Bucktail 
Republicans, 73. 

Hamlin, Haiiuibal, at Democratic 
convention of 1840, 379. 

Hammond, Jabez D., quoted, 65, 68, 
78, 168 ; on Van Bui'eu's trickery, 
175. 

Harrison, William Henry, nouiinated 
by Whigs in 1836,260 ; his answers 
to Williams's questions, 264 ; vote 
for, in election, 279, 280 ; renomi- 
nated for president, 377 ; denouncecl 
as a Federalist by Democrats, 379 ; 
denies charge of abolitionism, 381, 
382 ; opposes abolition in District of 
Columbia, 381 ; character of his 
speeches in the campaign, 386 ; vote 
for, in 1840, 390, 391 ; welcomed to 
White House by Van Buren, 394 ; 
his death, 401 ; one of the medio- 
crities of Wliite Hou.se, 463. 

Harvard College, confers on Jackaon 
degree of Doctor of Laws, 255. 

Hayue, Robert Y., on " era of g'^od 
feeling," 88; against tariff of 1824, 
99, 100; his arguments, 101, 102; 
votes to reject Clay's rominatlon 
to State Department, 123 ; on 
Clay's Panama scheme, 127 ; pro- 
tests against tariff of 1828, 144; a 
leader of Senate until 1828, 148 ; his 
debate witii Webster, 188 ; opposes 
confirmation of Van Buren as min' 
ister to England, 230. 

Head, Sir Francis B., on Mackenzie as 
a liar, 326 n. ; as governor, refuses to 
placate disaffected Canadians, 352, 
353 ; leaves Canada, 355. 

Henry, John V., New York Federal- 
ist, removed from office by Repub- 
licans, 50. 

Henry, Matthew, on " sober second 
thought of people," 458 n. 

Henry, Patrick, his separatist atti- 
tude, 5. 

Hill, Isaac, in kitchen caWnet, 193; 
letter of Lewis to, proposing a na 
tional convention, 237. 

Hoes, Hannah, marries Van Buren, 
21 ; her death, 36. 

Holmes, John, votes against Panama 
congress, 131. 

House of Representatives, defeats im 



^0 



INDEX 



dependent treasury bill, 337, 338; 
rejects renewal of a bank, 340 ; de- 
feats secoud treasury bill, 346 ; 
finally passes it, 348 ; struggle for 
control of, iu 1839, 374-377 ; case 
of tlie five New Jersey congress- 
men, 374, 375 ; refusal of clerk to 
call names of contestants, 374, 375 ; 
organization of, by Adams and 
Rhett, o7G, 377. 

Houston, Samuel, defeats Mexicans, 
358, 

Hoxie, Joe, in campaign of 1840, 390. 

Hoyt, Jesse, letter of Butler to, on 
Van Buren, 31 ; letter of Butler to, 
on judicial arrogance, 84 ; letters of 
Van Buren to, on appointments to 
state office, 173, 174 ; on Jackson, 
190 ; on necessity of a newspaper 
organ, 192 ; \%Tites insolent letter, 
urging Van Bui^n to dismiss office- 
holders, 210 ; succeeds Swartwout 
as collector at New York, oG4 ; his. 
character, 304, 3C5; his election 
bets, 453 n. 

Hoyt, Lorenzo, complains of Van 
Buren's slowness to remove oppo- 
nents fi-om office, 20S. 

Hunkers, origin of, their leaders, 415 ; 
struggle with Barnburners in New 
York, 417 ; aided by Polk, 417 ; gain 
control of party, 418. 

Hunter, Robert M. T., elected speaker 
of House in 1839, 376; his later 
career, 376. 

Ingham, Sashtei. D. , secretary of trea- 
sury, 179 ; describes rush of office- 
seekers, 210. 

Inman, Henry, his portrait of Van 
Buren, 449. 

Internal improvements, debates on, 
in Senate, 95-98, 117, 142 ; opposi- 
tion becomes part of Democratic 
policy, 98 ; advocated bj' Adams, 
121 ; bill for, vetoed by Jackson, 
201, 202; not mentioned by Demo- 
crats in platform of 1832, 240 ; de- 
mand for, caused by expansion of 
West, 290. 

tving, Washington, appointed secre- 
tary of legation at London by Van 
Biu-en, 224 ; liis popularity iu Eng- 



land, 225 ; wishes to resign. hi:t to 
mains with Van Buren, 225 ; his 
friendship for Van Buren, 225 ; 
travels through England witli Van 
Buren, 22G ; on Van Buren's career 
in London, 228; declines offers of 
Democratic nominations, 3<;i ; de- 
clines offer of Navy Department, 
361, 362 ; lives at Kinderliook, 398. 

Jackson, Andrew, Van Buren a re- 
presentative of, iu ISt'iO, 2 ; his con- 
nection with Burr, 18 ; on " rota- 
tion in office,'" 54; his victory at 
New Orleans, 63 ; thanked by New 
York legislature. 63 ; urges Mon- 
roe to appoint Federalists to office, 
89 ; elected to Senate, 94 ; rela- 
tions with Benton, 94 ; his attitude 
on internal improvements, 98 ; on 
the tariff, 104 ; does not vote on 
proposed amendment of electoral 
procedure, 106 ; votes for internal 
improvements, 117 ; votes for occu- 
pation of Oregon, 117 ; his popular- 
ity utilized by Van Buren to form a 
party, 118; retires from Senate, 
119 ; slowness of Van Buren to sup- 
port, 119; votes to reject Clay's 
nomination to State Department, 
123 ; aids his own candidacy, 131 ; 
defends Van Buren from charge 
of non-committalism, 151 ; his con- 
gressional record inconsistent with 
nominal Jacksonian creed, 155 ; his 
career as strict constructionist, 155 ; 
not a mere tool, but a real party 
manager, 155, 1^6 ; and a real na- 
tional statesman, 156 ; management 
of his candidacy in New York, 158 •> 
slandered in campaign of 1828, 162, 
163 ; offers Van Buren State De- 
partment, 167 ; opposed by Anti- 
Masons, 167 ; erroneous popular 
view of his first term, 177, 178 ; its 
real significance, 178 ; his cabinet, 
reasons for appointments, 179 ; un- 
moved by Calhoun's objections to 
Van Buren's appointment, 180, 181 ; 
anger at Mrs. Eaton's defamers, 
181, 182 ; quarrels with wives of 
cabmet secretaries, 182 ; his con- 
demnation by Calhoun in Monroe'? 



INDEX 



481 



cabinet for Seminole affair, 185 ; 
ignorant of Calhoun's attitude, 185 ; 
told b}' Lewis and Crawford, 180 ; 
demands an explanation from Cal- 
houn, 186 ; his reply to Calhoun, 
187; sends Callioun's letter to" Van 
Biiren, 187 ; iii? toast for the Union, 
188 ; declares for Van Buren as his 
success >r, 189, 190 ; friendly feelings 
of Van Buren for, 190 ; attack upon, 
prepared by Green, 191 ; absurdity 
of story of his control by kitchen 
cabinet, 193 ; accepts Van Buren's 
resignation and approves his candi- 
dacy, 197 ; his answer to invitation 
to visit Charleston, 198 : appoints 
Livingston secretary of state, 199; 
reorganizes cabinet, 199, 200 ; doubts 
of Van Buren as to his Jeffersonian 
creed, 200 ; his inaugural colorless, 
201 ; vetoes Maysville road, his 
arguments, 201, 202 ; begins oppo- 
sition to bank, 202, 203 ; defends 
removal of Cherokees from Geor- 
gia, 203; refuses to follow Supreme 
Court, 203 ; begins to doubt wisdom 
of high tariff, 204, 205 ; gains much 
development of ideas from Van Bu- 
ren and others, 205, 20G ; not jeal- 
ous of Van Buren's ability, 20G ; 
adopts Van Buren's theories, 200 ; 
not largely influenced by kitchen 
cabinet, 207 ; angered at opposition 
in government officials, 212 ; de- 
fends system of removals from of- 
fice, 213 ; his action less blamewor- 
thy than Lincoln's, 215 ; urges 
France to pay spoliation claims, 
216 ; boasts of his success, 216, 
217 ; adopts peaceful tone toward 
England, 219 ; his connection with 
West India trade, 222 ; escorts Van 
Buren from Washington, 224 ; com- 
plimented by William IV., 229, 
230 ; sends Van Buren's nomina- 
tion to Senate, 230; replying to 
New York Democrats, justifies Van 
Buren, 235; does not desire, by 
national convention, to throttle 
the party, 238 ; his policy renders 
a party platform unnecessary, 240 ; 
Bignificance of his election, 247 ; 
issues nullification proclamation, 



248 ; adopts strict constructionist 
views, 249 ; orders removal of de- 
posits from Bank of United States, 
249, 250 ; refuses to postpone, 251 ; 
fears to leave deposits in bank, 
252 ; considers distress fictitious 
253 ; cordial relations with VaL 
Buren as vice-president, 254 ; his 
journey in New England, 255 ; de- 
nounced by friends of White for 
preferring Van Buren, 25C ; urges 
Tennessee to support Van Buren, 
262 ; attacked by Clay, 2(i3 : signs 
bill to distribute surplus, 2()(; ; con- 
dennis circulation of abolitionist 
matter in the niailF, 276 ; with Van 
Buren at inauguration, 2S2 ; the 
last president to leave office with 
popularity, 282 ; his departure 
from Washington, 283 ; tribute of 
Van Buren to, in inaugural ad- 
dress, 285 ; rejoices in high wages, 
290 ; and in sales of public lauds, 
294 ; finally understands it to mean 
speculation, 294, 303 ; aids specula- 
tion by his pet banks, 295; reluc- 
tantly approves distribution of sur- 
plus, 301 ; issues specie circular, 
304 ; his prudent attitude as pre- 
sident toward Texas, 358 ; urges 
claims upon Mexico, 359 ; dealings 
with Van Buren regarding Swart- 
wout's appointment, 364 ; writes let- 
ter supporting Van Buren in 1840, 
387 ; character of life in White 
House under, 395 ; visited by Van 
Buren in 1842, 400; writes letter 
in favor of Texas annexation, 404; 
tries to minimize Van Buren's atti- 
tude on Texas, 407,408; his death 
weakens Van Buren politically, 
416 ; query of Van Buren concern- 
ing his family prayers, 453 ; his 
firm affection for Vnn Buren, 454, 
455 ; inferior to Van Buren in states- 
manship, 463. 

Jay, John, leader of New York Fed- 
eralists, 39 ; removals from office 
under, 47 ; controversy with coun- 
cil over appointments, 49. 

Jefferson, Joseph, his play of "Rip 
Van Winkle," 7. 

Jefferson, Thomas, Van Buren's dis 



482 



INDEX 



cipleship of, 2, 3, 12 ; popular feel- 
ing at time of his election, 4 ; cre- 
ates American politics, 5, G ; ill- 
treated by historians, G, 10 ; im- 
plants democracy in American tra- 
dition, G, 7, 9 ; bitterly hated by 
opponents, 9, 10 ; his position as 
Sage of Monticello, 12, 13 ; mem- 
ber of land-liolding class, 33 ; pol- 
icy toward Europe opposed by Fed- 
eralists, 39 ; relations with Living- 
ston family, 11 ; refuses to pi'oscribe 
Federalist office-holders, 48 ; liis at- 
titude toward slavery, 91 ; con- 
demns constitutional doctrines of 
J. Q. Adams, 154 ; retains popular- 
ity to end of term, 282 ; sends Van 
Buren a sketch of his relations with 
Hamilton, 4G0 ; his policj' steadily 
followed b3' Van Buren, 400 ; one of 
greatest presidents, 4G4 ; compared 
as party-builder to Van Buren, 405. 

?essup. General Thomas S., seizes Os- 
ceola, 3GG. 

Johns, Rev. Dr., at Democratic con- 
vention of 1844, 408. 

Johnson, Richard M., leads agitation 
for abolition of imprisonment for 
debt by federal courts, 27, 142; on 
interest of Holy Alliance in United 
States, 100 ; votes for Panama con- 
gress, 131 ; candidate for vice-pre- 
sidencj', 239 ; nominated for vice- 
presidency in 1835, 259; refusal of 
Virginia to support, 2G0 ; chosen 
vice-president by Senate, 281. 

Johnston, Josiali S., votes for Pan- 
ama congress, 131. 

Jones, Samuel, in Medcef Eden case, 
30. 

Kane, Elias K., votes against Pan- 
ama congress, 131 ; supports tariff 
of 1828, 143. 

Kansas-Nebraska bill, passed, its 
effect, 440, 441 ; Van Buren's opin- 
ion of, 442-444. 

Kendall, Amos, helps Blair to estab- 
lish Jacksonian paper, 191 ; in 
kitchen cabinet, 193 ; on Van Bu- 
ren's non-connection with the 
*' Globe," 194 ; postmaster-general, 
199; on good terms with Van Bu- 



ren, 207 ; describes regret at dis 
missing old government officials, 
208, 209 ; defends propriety of re- 
movals under Jackson, 211 ; letter 
of Lewis to, on a national conven- 
tion, 237 ; describes liow he con- 
vinced Van Buren on bank question, 
250 ; asks state banks to accept de- 
posits, 250 ; willing to postpone ac- 
tion, 251 ; lii.s avowed nioderation 
as to appointments to office, 2G1, 
202 ; his letter on abolition matter 
in the mails. 275, 270 ; continues m 
office under Van Buren, 283 ; re- 
signs from Van Buren's cabinet, 
his reasons, 393, 394. 

Kent, James, his legal fame. 19 ; dis- 
like of Van Buren for, 25 ; his de 
cision in debtors' case reversed, 2G ; 
attacked by Van Buren in Medcef 
Eden case, 30 ; his political parti- 
sanship, 44; in New York consti- 
tutional convention, 77 ; opposes 
vigorously proposal to broaden suf- 
frage, 77, 78 ; opposes making 
county officers elective, 82 ; contro- 
versy with Van Buren over act to 
promote privateering, 83 ; comment 
of Van Buren on, 84 ; his political 
narrowness, 24G ; nominated on 
Anti-Mason electoral ticket, 240. 

Kent, James, elected governor of 
Maine in 1840, 390. 

King, John A., joins Bucktail Republi 
cans, 73. 

King, Preston, at Utica convention, 
425. 

King, Rufus, leader of New York 
Federalists, 39 ; reelected to U. S. 
Senate by Van Buren's aid, 08, 09 ; 
Van Buren's eulogy of, 09-72; his 
friendly relations with Van Buren, 
72 ; opposes admission of Missouri 
as slave State, 73, 74 ; in New Y'ork 
constitutional convention, 77 ; op- 
poses making county officers elec- 
tive, 82 ; votes to prevent slave 
trade in Florida, 93 ; opposes tariff 
of 1824, 99 ; his constitutional argu- 
ment, 100 ; denounces caucus nomi- 
nations, 105 ; opposes abolition ot 
imprisonment for debt, 110; on 
account of advancing years, de- 



INDEX 



483 



clines to be candidate for reelec- 
tion, 117. 

Kitchen cabinet, its character and 
membership, 193 ; its great ability, 
193 ; does not control Jackson, 193. 

Kuower, Benjamin, member of Al- 
bany Regency, 111. 

Kremer, George, opens Democratic 
convention of 1835, 258. 

Lafayette, Marquis de, compli- 
ment of Jackson to, 21G. 
Lands, public, enormous sales of, 294 ; 
significance of speculation in, not 
understood by Jackson, 294 ; the 
source of fictitious wealth, 308-312 ; 
specie circular causes depreciation 
in, 312, 313 ; preemption scheme 
adopted, 357. 

Lansing, Gerrit Y., chancellor of 
New York, reverses Kent's decision 
in debt case, 26 ; continues as judge 
to be a politician, 44. 

Lawrence, Abbot, denounces admin- 
istration for causing panic of 1837, 
321, 322. 

licavitt, Joshua, reports name of 
Van Buren to Buftalo convention, 
428. 

Legal profession, its early eminence 
in United States, 19, 32, 33, 35; 
share%in politics, 44. 

Leggett, William, proclaims right of 
discussion and cor.demns slavery, 
271 ; condemns circulation of aboli- 
tion literature in the South, 275. 

Letcher, Robert P., disgusted at nomi- 
nation of Polk, 412. 

Lewis, Morgan, Republican leader in 
New York, 42 ; defeats Burr for 
governor, 44 ; leads Republican fac- 
tion opposed to Clinton, 44 ; asks 
aid from Federalists to secure re- 
election, 44, 45. 

Lewis, William B., tells Jackson of 
Forsyth's letter on the Seminole 
affair, 186 ; asks Jackson to desig- 
nate his choice for successor, 189 ; 
in kitchen cabinet, 193 ; not cer- 
tain of Jackson's favor, 207 ; sug- 
gests a national convention to nomi- 
nate a vice-president, 237. 

iiiberty party, its vote in 1844 in the 



State of New York, defeats Clay; 
412, 413 ; nominates Hale in 1847, 
431. 

Lincoln, Abraham, contrast with 
Van Buren in 1800, 3 ; his responsi- 
bility for spoils system, 215; atti- 
tude on slavery in the States, 272 , 
elected president on Wihiiot Pro- 
viso, 416 ; opposed by Van Buren 
in 1860, 445 ; supported by Van Bu- 
reu during war, 447. 

Livingston, Brockholst, his judicial 
career, 41 ; both judge and politi- 
cian, 44. 

Livingston, Edward, his career as 
Republican, 41 ; appointed mayor 
of New York, 49 ; favors Jackson 
for presidency, 150 ; asked by Van 
Buren to succeed him as secretary 
of state, 194 ; aj)p()inted by Jack- 
son, 199 ; drafts nullification procla- 
mation, 248, 249. 

Livingston, Edward P., defeated by 
Van Buren for state senator, 53. 

Livingston, Maturin, removed from 
office by Clintonians, 51 . 

Livingston, Robert R., defeated for 
governor of New York by Jay, 41 ; 
his Revolutionary, legal, and diplo- 
matic career, 41 ; jealous of Ham- 
ilton, 42 ; both Judge and party 
leader, 44. 

Livingston family, gains influence 
through landed wealth, 33 ; its 
political leadership in New York, 
41, 42 ; attacked by Burrites, 43 ; 
quarrels with Clintonians, 51. (See 
New York.) 

Livingstonians, faction of New York 
Democrats, 41, 42; quarrel with 
Clintonians, 44; expel Clintonians 
from municipal offices, 52. 

Loco-foco party, faction of Demo- 
crats, 342 ; origin of name, 343 ; 
their creed, 343; denounced as an- 
archists, 344; give New York city 
to Whigs, 344 ; reunite with Demo- 
crats in 1837, upon a moderate de- 
claration of equal rights, .'544. 

Louis Philippe, urged by Jackson to 
pay American claims, 216 ; charac- 
ter of his court, 227. 

Lovejoy, Elijah P., auti-slaverj 



484 



INDEX 



leader, 273 , his murder not of 
political interest, 359. 
Luudy's Lane, battle of, G2. 

McJiLTON, Rev. , at Democratic 

Convention of 1844, 408. 

IlcKean, Samuel, complains to Ken- 
dall of political activity of postmas- 
ters, 2G1. 

McLane, Louis, secretary of treasury, 
199 ; Van Buren's instructions to 
liim when minister to England, 219- 
221 ; his successful negotiations re- 
garding West India trade, 222 ; 
wishes to return, 223 ; mentioned 
as candidate for vice-presidency, 
238 ; wishes removal of deposits 
postponed, 250 ; disapproving of 
removal of deposits, resigns State 
Department, 255. 

JIcLean, John T., appointed to Su- 
preme Court, 179 ; refuses to pro- 
scribe postmasters, 207 ; wishes 
Anti-Masonic nomination for presi- 
dency, 245. 

Iidackenzie, William L., quoted by Von 
Hoist, 32G n. ; his character, 326 ; 
leads an insurrection in Upper Can- 
ada, 353 ; flies to Buffalo and plans 
a raid, 353 ; indicted and convicted, 
350 ; on Van Buren's refusal to 
pardon him, becomes a bitter en- 
emy, 356. 

Madison, James, member of land-own- 
ing class, 33 ; his foreign policy at- 
tacked by Federalists, 39 ; voted 
against by Van Buren in 1812, 58; 
his incapacity as war leader, 59 ; 
criticised by Van Buren for sanc- 
tioning Bank of United States, 146 ; 
compared to Van Buren in regard 
to ability, 464. 

Maine, threatens war over disputed 
boundary, 367 ; angered at Van Bu- 
ren's peaceful measures, ;X>7. 

Manlej', Dr., refusal of Van IJuren to 
remove from office, 174. 

Manning, Daniel, member of Albany 
Regency. 112, 192 n. 

Marcy, William L., aids Van Buren, 
in behalf of King's election to Sen- 
ate, 69 ; member of Albany Regency, 
111, 112 ; appointed a judge by Vuu 



Buren, 174 ; defends spoils system, 
his famous phrase, 232 ; warns 
against over-speculation in 1836, 
302, 303 ; calls out New York mili- 
tia to itrevent raids into Canada, 
335 ; leads Hunkers, 415, 417 ; sup- 
ports compromise of 1850, 437. 

Marshall, John, on Jefferson's politi- 
cal principles, 6 ; his legal fame, 
19. 

Massachusetts, supports Webster for 
president in 1836, 260. 

Meigs, Henry, urged by Van Buren to 
remove postmasters, 75. 

Mexico, its war with Texas, 357 ; neu- 
trality toward, declared by Van Bu- 
ren, 358 ; claims against, pressed by 
Van Buren, 359, 360. 

Missouri, legislature of, compliments 
Van Buren, 399. 

Missouri question, in New York, 73, 
74 ; its slight effect on national com- 
placency, 90, 91. 

Monroe, Jumes, member of land-own- 
ing class, 33 ; reelected president, 
72 ; voted for by Van Buren in 
1820, 75; his message of 1820, 88; 
his character, 89 ; his tour in New 
England, 89 ; views on party gov- 
ernment, 89, 90 ; vetoes internal 
improvement bill, 95, 96, 121 ; dis- 
cussion in his cabinet o^er Jack- 
son's action in Seminole matter, 
185 ; complimentary dinner to, in 
1829, 186; inferior as president to 
Van Buren, 463. 

Monroe doctrine, its relation to Pan- 
ama congress, 124. 

Moore, Gabriel, remark of Benton to, 
on Van Buren, 234. 

Morgan, William, his Masonic revela- 
tions and abduction, 167. 

Morton, Marcus, elected governor of 
Massachusetts by one vote, 370 ; 
leads Nortliern Democrats at con- 
vention of 1844, 408 ; opposes twO' 
thirds rule, 409. 

Napoleon III., explains to Van Buren 
his reasons for returning to Europe, 
362. 

National Republicnns, attacked by 
Van Buren, 145, 146 ; organized in 



INDEX 



485 



defense of Adams, 153, 154 ; signifi- 
cance of their defeat, 1G2 ; defeated 
in New York election, IGli. (See 
Whigs.) 

Nelson, Samuel, in New York consti- 
tutional convention, 77. 

New England, popularity of Van Bu- 
ren in, 280. 

New Orleans, battle of, its effect, 63. 

New York, social conditions in, 14, 
15 ; litigiousness in, 19 ; bar of, 
20, 23; Senate of, sits with Su- 
preme judges as court of errors, 
23 ; imprisonment for debt in, 25 ; 
Medcef Eden case in, 28, 29; poli- 
tics in, after 1800, 38, 39 (see Re- 
publican (Democratic) partj'); coun- 
cil of appointment in, 45, 46 ; spoils 
system in, 4G-57 ; casts electoral 
■ votes for Clinton in 1812, 58, 59 ; 
war measures in, CI, G2 ; thanks 
Jackson in 1814, 03; popularity of 
Clinton in, 66; instructs senators 
and representatives to oppose ad- 
mission of slave States, 74 ; con- 
stitutional convention in, 77-87 ; 
refuses suffrage to negroes, 81 ; pop- 
ular animosity in, against judges, 
84 ; approves their removal from 
office, 86 ; straggle for vote of, in 
election of 1824, 10^U5; its vote 
secured by Adams and Clay, 115 ; 
instructs Van Buren to vote for pro- 
tection, 144 ; reelects Van Buren 
senator, 147 ; prominence of Van 
Buren, 16G ; election of 1828, 1G6, 
167 ; its presidential vote, 167, 168 ; 
career of Van Buren as governor of, 
168-176; bread riots m 1837, 314, 
315; carried by Whigs, 342; sym- 
pathy in, for Canadian insurrection, 
353, 363, 369; visits of Van Buren 
to, 367-369, 398 ; carried by Polk in 
conse(iuence of Birney's vote, 412, 
413 ; supports Wilmot Proviso, 417, 
418 ; carried by Whigs because of 
Barnburners' bolt, 422, 431 ; election 
of 1860 in, 445. 
Newspapers, their early importance 

in politics, 191, 192. 
Jiiles, John M., of Connecticut, suc- 
ceeds Kendall in postofflce in 1838, 
3»4. 



Niles's Register, on Democratic cou. 
veution of 1835, 259, 

Noah, Mordecai M., opposes election 
of Jackson in 1832, 247. 

North, its attitude toward slavery iu 
1820, 91 ; economically superior to 
South, 91 ; disclaims responsibility 
for slavery in South, 92; btit op- 
poses its extension to new territory, 
92; yet acquiesces in compromise, 
93; favorstariff of 1828, 143; elects 
Van Buren in I83t), 280 ; its atti- 
tude toward South after 1840, 437. 

Nullification, stated by Hayue in hiij 
reply to Webster, 188 ; denounced 
by Jackson, 198, 199, 248, 249. 

Oakley, Thomas J., attorney -?;eiieral 
of New York, 23; supplauts V'an 
Buren, 24. 

Ogden, David B., opposes Burr and 
Van Buren iu E^len case, 311. 

Olcott, Thomas W,, member of Al- 
bany Regency, 111. 

Osceola, leads Seminole tnsnrrection, 
366; his capture and death, 36(). 

Otis, Harrison Gray, votes to prevent 
slave trade in Florida, i»3. 

Overton, Judge John, lett^: of Jack- 
son to, 189. 

Paljiebstoiv, LiORV, comjmred as par 
liamentarian to Van Buren, 123 
149. 

Panama congress, suggested by Ad 
ams, 122; and by Clay, 124; ittj 
purposes as stated by Adams, 124- 
126 ; contrary to settled policy of 
country, 125; opposed by Van Bu- 
ren in Senate, 126-129; affected by 
slavery question, 127 ; advocated by 
Webster, 130 ; faife to produce any 
results, 130; vote upon, creates a 
new party, 131. 

Papineau, Louis Joseph, heads insur- 
rection in Lower Canada, 352. 

Parish, Henry, on New York commit- 
tee to remonstrate against si>ecie 
circular, 317. 

Parton, James, quoted, 183, 237. 

Paulding, James K., succeeds Dicker- 
son as secretary of navy, 3C>0 ; 9 
Republican literary partisan, 3G0; 



486 



INDEX 



Ms appointment resented by politi- 
cians, 302 ; visits South with Van 
Bureu, 400. 

People's party, in New York, rivals of 
Bucktails, 10!> ; favors Adams for 
presidency, 110; votes to remove 
Clinton from office, 110; demands 
choice of electors by people, 111, 
112, 

Phillips, Wendell, anti-slavery leader, 
273. 

Pierce, Franklin, gets electoral vote 
of New Eng;land, but not the popu- 
lar vote, 2S0, 2^1 ; opposes Texas 
aiuiexation, 424 ; Democratic can- 
didate in 1852, 431) ; supported by 
Van Buren, 43'J ; offers Van Buren 
position of arbitrator, 440 ; one of 
mediocrities of White House, 403. 

Plattsburg, battle of, 02. 

Poinsett, Joel R., secretary of war 
under Van Buren, 2S3 ; denounced 
by Webster for recommending fed- 
eral organization of militia, 383. 

Polk, James K., elected speaker of 
House, 337 ; nominated for presi- 
dent, 410, 411 ; his career, signifi- 
cance of his choice, 412 ; his elec- 
tion causes a schism in Democratic 
party, 415, 410 ; tries to placate 
Barnburners, 415, 410 ; gives fed- 
eral patronage to Hunkers, 417 ; 
attitude of Van Buren toward, 420, 
421 ; one of mediocrities of White 
House, 463. 

Powell. See Osceola. 

Preston, William C, offers resolution 
to annex Texas, 350 ; attacks Van 
Buren in campaign of 1840, 385. 

Prussia, treaty with, 127, 128. 

Randolph, John, his career in Senate, 
131, 148. 

Republican (Democratic) party, its 
ideals as framed by Jefferson, 6, 7 ; 
gains majority of American people, 
8, 9 ; dominant in New York, 40 ; 
factions and leaders of, 40-43 ; de- 
feats Burr in 1S04, 44; controlled 
by Olintonians, 45 ; its share in 
establishing spoils sy.stem, 47-53 ; 
New York members of, oppose war 
in 181?, 58, 69 ; but later support 



Madison, 60 ; recovers control of 
New York government, its war 
measures, 01, 62 ; in favor at end of 
war, 63 ; makes Jackson its military 
hero, (53 ; commits sliarp practice in 
"Peter Allen " case, G4, 65; gains 
control of legislature in 1810, 65; 
obliged to permit election of Clin- 
ton as governor, 66 ; divides into 
factions of Bucktails and Cliuto- 
nians, 67, 69 ; receives accession* 
from Federalists, 72, 73 ; opposes 
admission of Missouri as a slave 
State, 74 ; in congressional caucus 
of 1816 nominates Monroe, 74, 75 ; 
comprises all of country in 1820- 
1824, 90 ; personal rivalries in, 90, 
94, 95 ; Crawford the regular can- 
didate of, 100, 107. 

Republican party of 1S56, founded on 
Wilmot Proviso, 410 ; abandons it 
in 1861, 438 ; nominates Fremont 
in 1850, 441, 442 ; attitude of Van 
Buren tJoward, 441, 442, 445 ; dis- 
trusted as dangerous, 445 ; in elec- 
tion of 1860, 445. 

Rhett, Barnwell, moves election of 
Adams in 1839 as temporary chair- 
man of House, 376. 

Richmond, Dean, member of Albany 
Regency, 112. 

Riggs, Elisha, on New York commit- 
tee to remonstrate against specie 
circular, 317. 

Ringgold, Samuel, refers to Monroe 
as only one favorable to Jackson in 
Seminole matter, 185. 

Rives, William C, instructions of Van 
Buren to, 217 ; defeated for vice- 
presidential nomination, 259 ; later 
leaves party, 260 ; opposes inde- 
pendent treasury, 347 ; denounces 
Van Buren in election of 1840, as 
covertly planning usurpation, 384, 
385. 

Rochester, William B., supported by 
Vcn Buren for governor against 
Clinton, 147. 

Rogers, Samuel, in London society in 
1832, 227. 

Root, General Erastus, leads radical 
party "n constitutional convention, 
87. 



INDEX 



481 



Roseboom, , in council of appoint- 
ment of 1801, 49. 

iowai), Joliu, supports tariff of 1828, 
143. 

Rush, Richard, his wide views of 
functions of government, 160. 

Russell, Sir John, interferes with 
Canadian taxation, 351. 

Sanford, Nathan, succeeded in Uni- 
ted States Senate by Van Buren, 
76 ; in New York constitutional 
convention, 77 ; bound by instruc- 
tions of New York legislature, 143. 

Santa Anna, captured at San Jacinto, 
358. 

Schurz, Carl, his career in Senate 
compared with Van Buren's, 118. 

Schuyler family, member of lauded 
aristocracy, 33. 

Scott, Sir Walter, in London society 
in 1832, 227. 

Scott, General Winfield, sent by Van 
Buren to prevent troubles on Cana- 
dian frontier, 355 ; "Whig candidate 
for president in 1852, 439. 

Seminole war, Jackson's connection 
with, 185, 186 ; its cause and pro- 
gress, 365, 366 ; policy of removal 
of Seminoles justified, 366, 367. 

Senate of United States, membership 
of, in 1821, 94 ; debates internal 
improvements, 95-98 ; debates tariff 
of 1824, 99-103; debates on inter- 
nal improvements and on Oregon, 
117 ; confirms Clay's appointment 
by Adams, 123 ; debates Panama 
congress, 126-131 ; position of Van 
Buren in, 131 ; debates internal 
improvements, 132, 133 ; and change 
in mode of election of president, 
133 ; debates bills to regulate execu- 
tive patronage, 137-140 ; on bank- 
ruptcy bill, 141 ; its cliaracter dur- 
ing 1821-1828, 148; more truly a 
parliamentary body tlien than later, 
149 ; debate in, on nomination of 
Van Buren as minister to England, 
230-233; rejects it, 233, 234; de- 
bates bill to exclude anti-slavery 
matter from mails, 276-278 ; a tie 
TOte in, arranged to force Van Buren 
to vote, 277 ; passes sub-treasury 



bill, 337 ; votes against a bank, 340; 
debate in, on second sub-treasury 
bill, 346 ; resolves to recognize 
Texas, 358. 

Sergeant, John, nominated for vice- 
president, 246. 

Seward, William H., his position in 
Senate compared with Van Buren's, 
118-'123 ; connected with Anti-Ma- 
sonic party, 167, 245 ; approves dis- 
tribution of surplus, 301 ; elected 
governor of New York, 363 ; pub- 
licly refuses to accept invitation to 
reception to Van Buren in New 
York, 309 ; prefers Taylor to Van 
Buren, 431 ; wishes to defy South, 
437. 

Seymour, Horatio, member of Albany 
Regency, 112. 

Singleton, Miss, marries Van Buren's 
son, 395. 

Skinner, Roger, member of Albany 
Regency, 111. 

Slavery, not a political issue in 1821, 
91 ; mild popular attitude towards, 
91, 92; attitude of abolitionists 
towards, 270 ; attacked by Van Bu- 
ren's supporter, Leggett, 271 ; de- 
bated in connection with Texas, 
359 ; not in general politics, 359, 
403 ; enters politics with Texas 
question, 403, 414 ; impossibility of 
attempts to exclude from politics, 
422, 423. 

Smith, Gerrit, on Van Buren's nomi- 
nation, 428. 

Smith, Samuel, votes for Panama 
congress, 131. 

South, attitude tpwards slavery, 91 ; 
opposes tariff of 1828, 143 ; con- 
demns abolitionist petitions, 271 ; 
accuses Van Buren of abolitionism, 
271, 272 ; prohibits circulation of 
abolition literature, 275 ; upheld 
by Kendall, 275 ; justified in its 
action, 277 ; large defection from 
Van Buren in, 278, 279 ; distrusts 
Van Buren in 1840, 380, 387, 403 ; 
Van Buren charged with subservi- 
ency toward, 403 ; desires to annex 
Texas, 404 ; wins victory in defeat- 
ing Van Buren's nomination, 410; 
effect of slavery upon, 423; con- 



488 



INDEX 



Bidered a bully by Seward and Ben- 
ton, 437 ; attitude of "doughfaces" 
toward, justified by events, 437, 
438 ; secures Kansas-Nebraska bill, 
440 ; continues to loathe Van Buren, 
444. 

{Jouth Carolina, votes for Floyd in 
1832,248; supports White in 183G, 
2G0. 

Southwick, Solomon, Anti - Masonic 
candidate in New York, 1G6. 

Spain, Panama congress a defiance of, 
124. 

Bpencer, Ambrose, attorney-general 
of New York, 23 ; member of Clin- 
tonian faction. 44 ; in council of ap- 
pointment of ISOl, represents Liv- 
ingstonians, 48 ; introduces spoils 
system, 49, 50 ; promoted to higher 
offices, 51 : in New York constitu- 
tional convention, 77 ; his judicial 
pride described by Butler, 84. 

Spencer, John G., Clintonian candi- 
date for Senate in 1819, 69 ; ap- 
pointed by Van Buren to prosecute 
Morgan murderers, 174 ; reasons 
for his appointment, 175 ; nomina- 
ted for election by Anti-Masons, 
24G. 

Bpoils system, established in New 
York, 46 ; attitude of Washington 
towards, 46 ; its origin in struggles 
of Hamilton and Clinton, 46, 47 ; 
beginnings of removals for political 
reasons, 47 ; attitude of Jefferson 
toward, 48 ; established in 1801 by 
De Witt Clinton, 48-50 ; developed 
in years 1807-1813, 51, 52 ; becomes 
part of unwritten law, 52, 53; not 
to be wholly condemned at this 
time, 54 ; valuable in destroying 
English idea of property in office, 
55 ; does not damage public service 
at first, 56, 57 ; popular with voters, 

56, 57, 214 ; share of Van Buren in, 

57, 58 ; defense of, by Thurlow 
Weed, 67, 68 ; Van Buren not re- 
sponsible for its introduction into 
federal politics, 207 ; demand for, 
by Jacksonian office-seekers, 208- 
211 ; does not secure a clean sweep 
under Jackson. 211, 212; justifica- 
tion of removals under, 212, 213 ; 



policy of, defended by Jackson, 213, 
much worse under Lincoln, 215; 
used as reproach against Van Bu- 
ren, 232 ; advocated by Marcy, 232 ; 
denounced by Whigs, 246 ; defense 
of, by Kendall, in 1836, 261, 262; 
does not damage Van Buren in 
1840, 387; Polk's use of, against 
Van Buren, legitimate, 420. 

Squatter sovereignty, proclaimed by 
Dickinson and Cass, 422. 

Stevens, Thaddeus, ignores slavery in 
organizing Territories in 1861, 438. 

Stevenson, Andrew, defends system 
of national conventions in 1835, 
258. 

Story, Joseph, legal fame of, 19 ; on 
Van Buren's hospitality, 395. 

Suffrage, basis of, debate oii, in New 
York constitutional convention, 77- 
80. 

Sumner, Charles, his leadership in 
Senate compared with Van Buren's, 
118 ; position as anti-slavery leader, 
273; supports Van Buren in 1848, 
432 ; in 1861, abandons Wilmot Pro- 
viso, 438. 

Supreme Court, jealous attitude of 
Van Buren toward, 134-137; Jack- 
son's refusal to support, in Chero- 
kee case, justified, 203, 204 ; its 
opinion in Dred Scott case, 440, 
441. 

Swartwout, Colonel John, his duel 
with De Witt Clinton, 51. 

Swartwout, Samuel, his letter to 
Hoyt describes craze for oflBce under 
Jackson, 208 ; his career as col- 
lector of customs, 208 ; his defalca- 
tion while collector of New York 
discovered, 364. 

Sylvester, Francis, studies of Van 
Buren in his office, 16; defeated 
by Van Buren in lawsuit, 17 ; a 
Federalist in politics, 43. 

Talcott, Samuel A., attorney-general 
of New York, 23 ; in Eden will case, 
30 ; member of Albany Regency, 
101. 

Talleyrand, Marquis de, his position in 
1832, 227 ; compared by Chevaliei 
to Van Buren, 451. 



INDEX 



489 



Tallmadge, Nathaniel P., denounces 
Van Buren's financial policy, 347. 

Tammany Society, nucleus of Buck- 
tail faction, 07 ; offers Irving nomi- 
nation for mayor, 3G1. 

Taney, Roger B., attorney-general, 
199 ; transferred to Treasury De- 
partment, 255 ; his decision in 
Dred Scott case reviewed by Van 
Buren, 446, 447. 

Tappan, Lewis, on powers of Congress 
over slavery, 272. 

Tariff, of 1824, called "' American 
System," 99 ; how passed, 99 ; 
aided by fear of Holy Alliance, 99, 
100 ; arguments against, 100, 101 ; 
not a party question, 103, 104 ; of 
1828, called a " tariff of abomina- 
tion," 142 ; its character, sectional 
vote for, 143, 144 ; Jackson's views 
on, 204, 205 ; discussion of, in 1832, 
240 ; not mentioned in Democratic 
platform, 240 ; not an issue in 
1832, 247. 

Taylor, John W., opposed by Back- 
tail congressmen as a supporter of 
Clinton, 76. 

Taylor, Zachary, refusal of Van Bu- 
ren to support, 426 ; nominated by 
Whigs, 430 ; sounded by Free-soil- 
ers, 430 ; preferred by anti-slavery 
Whigs to Van Buren, 431 ; elected 
in 1848, 431 ; one of the mediocrities 
of the White House, 403. 

Tazewell, Littleton W., suggested by 
Calhoun for State Department, 180. 

" Telegraph," its attack ou Jackson, 
191. 

Tennessee, appealed to by Jackson in 
behalf of Van Buren, 262 ; presents 
Polk as candidate for vice-presi- 
dency, 412. 

Texas, its war of independence, 358 ; 
recognition refused by Van Buren, 
358 ; offers annexation and is re- 
fused, 358 ; opposition to, raises 
slavery question, 359 ; refuge of 
bankrupts, 370 ; annexation of, fa- 
vored by Tyler, 402 ; becomes a 
party question before Democratic 
convention in 1844, 404, 409; ad- 
mitted to Union in 1845, 413. 

Ihompson, Smith, Republican and 



Livingston ian leader in New York, 
42 ; both politician and judge, 44 ; 
defeated by Van Bureu for governor 
of New York, 166. 

Tilden, Samuel J., inherits political 
ideas from Jefferson tlirough Van 
Buren, 12 ; member of Albany Re- 
gency, 112 ; error of Democrats in 
discarding in 1880, 412 ; leader of 
Barnburners, 410 ; one of authors 
of Barnburner address of 1848, 
424 ; writes address calling Utica 
Convention, 425. 

Tillotson, Thomas, brother-in-law of 
R. R. Livingston, secretary of state 
in New York, 49 ; removed from 
office by Clintonians, 51. 

Timberlake, , first husband of 

Mrs. Eaton, commits suicide, 181. 

Tompkins, Daniel D., as judge, con- 
tinues party politician, 44 ; nomi- 
nated for governor and elected by 
Clintonians, 45 ; supports Madisca 
in 1814, 00 ; reelected governor, 60 ; 
removes De Witt Clinton from 
mayoralty of New York, 64 ; re- 
signs governorship to be vice-presi- 
dent, GO ; his pecuniary difficulties 
witli State, 68 ; defended by Van 
Buren in Senate, 68 ; reelected vice- 
president, 72 ; defeated for gov- 
ernor in 1820, 73 ; candidacy for 
president in 1816, 74 ; inferior in 
prestige to Van Buren in 1821, 76 ; 
in New York constitutional con- 
vention, 77 ; comments of Van Bu- 
ren on, 173. 

Tyler, John, nominated for vice- 
president in 1836, 200 ; nominated 
for vice-president by Whigs, 377 ; 
succeeds Harrison, his character, 
402 ; liis career, 402 ; his Texas 
treaty rejected, 413; an accidental 
president, 403. 

United States, political character of, 
formed by Jefferson, 5, 6 ; becomes 
Democratic, 7-9 ; gains individual- 
ity, 7 ; its vulgarity and crudeness, 
10 ; not understood by foreigners, 
10, 11; its real development int« 
national strength, 14, 17 ; promi- 
nence of lawyers in, 32, 33, 35: 



490 



INDEX 



early political importance of land- 
holding class, 33, 34 ; later position 
of wealth in, 34 ; favors rotation in 
office as democratic, 57 ; prosper- 
ity of, in 1S"21, 88 ; believes itself 
happy, 8'J ; unpopularity of coali- 
tions in, IIG, 1G4 ; considers panic 
of 1S37 due to Jackson, 287 ; suffers 
from depression after war of 1812, 
287 ; enjoys economic prosperity 
until Jackson's administration, 288 ; 
optimism of, 288 ; expansion of 
population, 288, 289 ; land specula- 
tion in, 289-294 ; enthusiasm over 
public works, 290 ; people of, homo- 
geneous and optimistic, 290-292 ; 
luxury in, during speculative era, 
309, 310 ; depression in, during 
1839, 377. 
University of the State of New York, 
connection of Van Buren with, G5. 

Van Alen, James J., law partner of 
Van Buren, 18 ; succeeded by him 
as surrogate, 22 : elected to Con- 
gress as Federalist, 43. 

Van Buren, Abraham, his farm, 14 ; 
keeps a tavern, 15. 

Van Buren, Abraham, serves as his 
father's secretary, 395 ; marries 
Miss Singleton, 395. 

Van Buren, John, his appearance, 1 ; 
relations with his father in 1860, 1, 
2 ; his political attitude, 2 ; accom- 
panies his father to England, 224 ; 
leads Barnburners, 415 ; at Herki- 
mer convention, 419 ; at Utica 
convention of 1847, 423 ; in part, 
author of Barnburner address, 
424; at Utica convention of 1848, 
425 ; continues rigidly anti-slavery 
until 1850,435 ; justifies submission 
to compromise ' <Jf 1850, 439 ; his 
election bets, i53 n. 

Van Buren, Lawrence, joins bolting 
Barnburners, 419. 

Van Buren, Martin, relations with his 
son in old age, 1 ; appearance, 1 ; 
his political position in 1800, 2, 3; 
resemblance to Jefferson, 3 ; lack 
of friends in later life, 3 ; type of 
early statesmen of republic, 4 ; in- 
fluenced by Jefferson's ideals, 12 ; 



ancestry, 14, 15 ; birth and early 
schooling, 15, 16. 
Legal Career. Enters law ofBce, 
10 ; his education, 16 ; becomes sue 
cessful lawyer, 17 ; enters office of 
Van Ness in New York, 17 ; inter- 
course with Burr, 17, 18 ; practises 
law at Kinderhook, 18 ; his success- 
ful career, 18-36 ; leads Republi- 
can lawjers, 20 ; his contests with 
Williams, 20 ; contrasted with Wil- 
liams by Butler, 20, 21 ; skill in 
argument and persuasion, 21 ; mar- 
riage, 21 ; holds office of surrogate, 
22 ; removes to Hudson, 22 ; read- 
ing habits, 22 ; continues to pro- 
sper in law, 22 ; later as state sena- 
tor becomes member of court of 
errors, 23 ; becomes attorney-gen 
era], 23 ; later removed for politi- 
cal reasons, 24 ; moves to Albany, 
24 ; partnership with Butler, 24 ; 
his opinion criticising Kent, 25 ; in 
court of errors reverses Kent's 
opinion in a debt case, 26 ; con- 
demns practice of imprisoning for 
debt, 27 ; in Medcef Eden case, 29 ; 
his argument, 30 ; secures a money 
competence, 30 ; his Oswego estate, 

30 ; gains political lessons during 
law practice, 31, 32 ; not an orator, 

31 ; his legal and political careers 
not strictly separable, 36 ; loses 
wife, 36 ; upright private life, 37. 

liepublican Leader in Neiv York. 
Early enthusiasm for Jefferson, 39. 
40 ; not won by Burr faction in 
1803, 43 ; supports Lewis for gov- 
ernor, 44 ; supports Clintonian 
faction in 1807, 45 ; appointed sur- 
rogate by Clintonian council of ap- 
pointment, 45 ; not the founder of 
spoils system, 50. 53 ; removed from 
office by Livingstouian faction, 52 ; 
nominated for state senator, 53 ; 
elected over Edward Livingston, 53 ; 
finds spoils system established, 53; 
becomes a master in use of offices, 
57, 58 ; reelected senator, 58 ; votes 
for Clintonian electors against 
Madison, 58 ; later condemned for 
this action, 58 ; an advocate oi 
embargo and of war of 1812, 59; 



INDEX 



491 



places state partj' before national, 
59 ; dissolves relations with Clin- 
ton, 59 ; in Senate defends war 
against Clinton's attack, GO ; sup- 
ports Tompkins for governor, GO, 
61 ; supports war measures, Gl ; 
becomes leader, Gl ; drafts classifi- 
eation act to prepare militia, G2 ; 
on victory at Plattsburg, 62 ; drafts 
resolution of thanks to Jackson, 
63 ; becomes attornej'-general, Go ; 
in " Peter Allen " election case, 
64 ; chosen regent of University 
of State of New York, G5 ; leaves 
party ranks to vote for canal bill, 
65 ; thanked by Clinton, 06 ; reluc- 
tant to allow Cliyton's election in 
1817, 66 ; leads faction of " Buck- 
tails," 67 ; removed from office 
of attorney-general, G7 ; his efforts 
in behalf of Tompkins's claims, 
68 ; writes pamphlet advocating re- 
election of King to Senate, 69-71 ; 
skill of his plea, 70, 71 ; urges his 
choice in private, 71, 7'2 ; friendly 
relations with King, 72 ; declares 
King's election iniinflnenced by 
Missouri question, 73 ; calls meet- 
ing at Albany to protest against 
slavery extension, 74 ; votes in Sen- 
ate for instructions to United States 
senators to oppose admission of a 
slave State, 74 ; present at congres- 
sional caucus in 1816 to nominate a 
president, 74 ; votes as elector for 
Monroe and Tompkins, 75 ; urges 
removal of unfriendly postmasters 
in New York, 75 ; not harmed by 
publication of this request, 75, 76 ; 
as leader of party in State, chosen 
United States senator, 76. 
Member of Constitutional Conven- 
tion. Elected from Otsego County, 
77 ; his share in debate on extend- 
ing franchise, 78 ; not non-commit- 
tal as charged, 79 ; his argument for 
universal suffrage, 79, 80 ; wishes it 
granted gradually, 80 ; opposes re- 
striction of suffrage to whites, 80 ; 
favors property qualification for 
blacks, 80, 81 ; reports on appoint- 
ments to office, 81, 82 ; recommends 
that militia elect all but highest 



officers, 8: ; his recommendations 
as to civil office, 81, 82 ; opposes 
election of judges, 82 ; his objection 
to council of revision, 83 ; unvvill- 
ii:g to say a good wurd for it, 83 ; 
votes against turning judges out of 
office, 85 ; wisdom of his course in 
the convention, 8G ; prevents his 
party from making radical changes, 
86, 87 ; shows courage, independ- 
ence, and patriotism, 87. 

United States Senator. Dislikes 
slavery in 1821, 93 ; votes to restrict 
admission of slaves to Florida, 93 ; 
his friends and associates in Senate, 
94 ; supports Crawford for succes- 
sion to Monroe as " regular " candi- 
date, 95 ; votes for Cumberland 
road bill, 95 ; later apologizes for 
vote, 96 ; proposes a constitutional 
amendment to authorize internal 
improvements, 97 ; probably im- 
pressed by Erie Canal, 98 ; speech 
in favor of abolishing imprisonment 
for debt, 98 ; votes for tariff of 
1824, 99 ; his protectionist views, 
99 ; his votes upon different see- 
tions, 102 ; influenced by New York 
sentiment, 102 ; later averse tip 
high protection, 103 ; but never 
considers tariff of supreme impor- 
tance, 103 ; urges constitutional 
amendment to leave election of 
president with electors in case o^ 
failure on first trial, 104 ; defends 
system of caucus nominations, 105 ; 
prestige as leader of New York in 
election of 1824, 106; at first in- 
clined to Adams, 107 ; Adams's opin- 
ion of, 107 ; abused by Crawford's 
enemies, 108 ; not involved in New 
York quarrel over canal commis- 
sionership, 110; yet his power en- 
dangered by Clinton's return to 
popularity, 111 ; his status in " Al- 
bany Regency," 111 ; advises New 
York Republicans to favor congres- 
sional caucus, 114 ; contini>es after 
failure of caucus to work for Craw- 
ford, 114 ; fails to secure New York 
for him, 115 ; not involved in 
election of Adams, 115; does not 
denounce Adams's election, 116 ; 



492 



INDEX 



takes increasing share in proceed- 
ings, 116 ; relations with King, 117 ; 
votes against extending Cumber- 
land road, 117 ; votes against occu- 
pation of Oregon, 117 ; on commit- 
tee to receive Adams, 117 ; becomes 
a parliamentary leader, 117 ; the real 
creator of Democratic party, 118 ; 
his position imique in American his- 
tory, 118 ; does not at first approve 
of Jackson as leader of opposition, 
119 ; his attitude toward Adams not 
factious, 120, 123 ; votes to confirm 
Clay's nomination, 123 ; abstains 
from personalities in opposition, 
123 ; introduces resolutions against 
Panama congress, 126 ; comment of 
Adams upon, 126 ; his speech upon 
the proposed mission, 127-129 ; ac- 
cuses Adams of Federalism, 128 ; 
condemns proposed alliance of re- 
publics, 129 ; most conspicuous 
member of Senate, 131 ; unites op- 
position on internal improvements, 
131 ; offers resolutions and votes 
against roads and canals, 132 ; wis- 
dom of his position, 132 ; walling to 
support military roads, 133 ; renews 
movement to take choice of presi- 
dent from the House, 133, 134 ; op- 
poses proposal to relieve Supreme 
Court from circuit duty, 134 ; shows 
desire to make Supreme Court 
democratic, 135 ; opposes regard- 
ing it with too great respect, 135- 
137 ; his share in Benton's report 
on executive patronage, 137-140 ; 
its discrepancy with his later views, 
139, 140; votes against abolition of 
salt tax, 140 ; favors establishment 
of Naval Academy, 140 ; opposes a 
bankruptcy bill, 141 ; speech on 
restrictions on trade with British 
colonies, 141 ; renews opposition to 
imprisonment for debt, to internal 
improvements, and repeal of salt 
tax in 1828, 142 ; votes for tariff of 
1828, 142 ; bound by instructions of 
New York legislature, 144 ; speech 
on power of vice-president to call to 
order, 144-147 ; asserts the neces- 
sity of defeating Adams in order to 
curb federal usurpation, 145, 146 ; 



reelected senator, 147 ; supports 
Rochester against Clinton for gov- 
ernor of New York, 147 ; eulogy 
on Clinton, 148 ; survey of Van Bu- 
ren's parliamentary career, 148- 
152 ; characteristics of his speaking, 
150 ; clear in announcing opinions, 
151 ; praised by Jackson for free- 
dom from non-committalism, 151 ; 
courteous in debate, 151, 152. 
Manager in Election of 1828. Re- 
cognized as chief organizer of new 
party, 153 ; uses cry against Arlams 
and Clay bargain, 154 ; not justly 
charged witli intrigue to unite 
Crawford's friends with Jackson's, 
157 ; his visit to Crawford in 1827, 
157 ; visits Adams, 158 ; compared 
by Adams to Burr, 158 ; does not 
announce support of Jackson until 
1827, 158 ; his opposition to Adams 
not merely personal, 161 ; does not 
use corrupt bargain cry, 163 ; prob- 
ably promised cabinet position by 
Jackson, 166 ; wishes to increase his 
prestige by securing governorship 
of New York, 166 ; nominated and 
elected, 166 ; resigns senatorship, 
168. 

Governor of New York. His in- 
augural message, 168-173 ; favors 
state aid to canals, 168 ; urges re- 
organization of banking system, 
169 ; suggests various devices to 
increase security of banks, 170 ; 
proposes separation of state and 
national elections, 170 ; denounces 
increasing use of money in elec- 
tions, 171 ; advocates strict con- 
struction of Constitution, 171, 172; 
defends reputation of country from 
results of campaign of 1828, 172 ; 
congratulates legislature on election 
of Jackson, 172, 173 : his letters to 
Hoyt on patronage, 173-175 ; shows 
partisanship, but desire to appoint 
able men, 174 ; character of his ap- 
pointees, 174, 175 ; resigns govern- 
orship after ten weeks' term to 
enter cabinet, 175; congratulated 
by legislature, 176. 
Secretary of State. Unfriendly 
view of his career in cabinet, 177. 



INDEX 



493 



178 ; forms creed of Jackson ian 
Dea-ocraoy, 178 ; shares discredit 
of int/caluciug spoils system, 178 ; 
easily the strongest man in caljinet, 
179 ; already rival to Calhoun for 
succession to Jackson, 179; reasons 
for his success over Calhoun, 180 ; 
does not succeed by tricks, 180 ; at- 
tempt of Calhoun to prevent his 
appointment as secretary of state, 
180 ; pleases Jackson by politeness 
to Mrs. Eaton, 183 ; his course botli 
politic and proper, 183, 184 ; not re- 
eponsible for Jackson's dislike of 
Calhoun, 185 ; refuses to take part 
in quarrel between the tvi^o, 187 ; 
his toast at Jefferson's birthday din- 
ner, 188 ; becomes an acknowledged 
candidate for presidency after Cal- 
houn's nullification declarations, 
188, 189 ; Jackson's letter of recom- 
mendation, 189, 190; his increasing 
esteem for Jackson, 190 ; represented 
by "Albany Argus" in newspaper 
controversy, 191 ; his high estimate 
of necessity of an organ, 192 ; refuses 
to subsidize Bennett, 192 ; declines 
to aid new Jackson paper with de- 
partmental printing, 194 ; yet is held 
responsible for it, 194 ; determines 
to resign aiid asks Livingston to take 
his place, 194 ; wishes, as a candidate 
for presidency, to avoid suspicion, 
195, 196 ; boldness and prudence of 
his action, 196, 198 ; avows imwill- 
ingness to injure Jackson's chances 
for reelection, 196, 197 ; praised by 
Jackson in reply, 197 ; his political 
creed fully adopted by Jackson, 200 ; 
at first doubts Jackson's full adher- 
ence, 200 ; probably assists in pre- 
paring Jackson's messages, 205, 206 ; 
wins Jackson's affection, 200 ; sup- 
plies him with political theories, 
206 ; on good terms with kitchen 
cabinet, 207 ; not the originator of 
spoils system in federal offices, 207 ; 
his letter to Hamilton advises cau- 
tion, 209 ; rebukes Hoyt for demand- 
ing a removal, 210 ; does not practice 
proscription in the State Depart- 
ment, 214 ; does not oppose the sys- 
tem elsewhere, 214 ; palliating rea- 



sons for his conduct, 215 ; successful 
in conduct of foreign affairs, 215; 
advises Jackson to refer to France 
with politeness, 216 ; deserves credit 
of securing payment of claims by 
France, 217 ; adopts conciliatory 
policy toward England, 219 ; in his 
instructions to McLane admits error 
of previous American claims, 219, 
220 ; alludes in his instructions to 
overthrow of Adams's administra- 
tion, 220 ; his position not undigni- 
fied, 221 ; yet previously had depre- 
cated entrance of party politics into 
diplomacy, 222 ; success of his di- 
plomacy, 222. 
Minuter to England. Constantly 
suspected of intrigue, 223 ; desires 
to escape from politics while candi- 
date for presidency by accepting 
mission to England, 223, 224; es- 
corted out of city by Jackson, 224 ; 
appoints Irving secretary of lega- 
tion, 224 ; finds liim at London, 224, 
225 ; his friendship with Irving, 225 ; 
Irving's opinion of, 225 ; his travels 
through England, 220 ; social life in 
London, 227 ; learns news of rejec- 
tion of his nomination by Senate, 
227, 228 ; his behavior, 228 ; leaves 
England, 228 ; character of his dis- 
patches, 229 ; presents claims in 
Comet case, 229 ; writes passages 
in reports complimentary to Jack- 
son, 229 ; returns to New York, de- 
clines a public reception, 230 ; goes 
to Washington, 230 ; attacked in 
Senate as un-American and cow- 
ardly, 230, 231 ; insincerity of the 
attack, 232 ; accused also of intro- 
ducing spoils system, 232 ; attacked 
by Calhoun as an intriguer, 233 ; 
Calhoun's desire to kill him politi- 
cally, 234 ; gains popularity from 
rejection, 234 ; urged for vice-presi- 
dent, 234 ; praised by New York 
legislature, 234 ; upheld by Jackson, 
235 ; receives various offers of offices, 
236 ; plan to elect him governor 
of New York repudiated by party 
leaders, 237 ; not concerned in sum- 
moning national convention of 1832, 
237, 238 ; nominated for vice-preai« 



494 



INDEX 



dency, 239 ; his nomination not the 
result of coercion, 240 ; the natural 
candidate, 240, 241 ; party reasons 
for his nomination, 241 ; his letter 
of acceptance, 241-243 ; affects re- 
luctance and humility, 242 ; writes 
a vague letter on the tariff, 243, 244 ; 
opposes internal improvements, a 
bank, and nullification, 244 ; writes 
letter on his subjection to calumny, 
244; elected in 1832, 247; speaks 
in approval of tariff for revenue, 
249. 

Vice-President. Opposes removal 
of deposits, 249 ; has heated argu- 
ment with Kendall, 250 ; later adopts 
Jackson's position, 250 ; proposes to 
Kendall that removal begin in Jan- 
uary, 1S34, 250 ; dislikes bank, 251 ; 
appealed to by Clay to intercede 
with Jackson, 253; liis conduct as 
described by Benton, 253 ; lives in 
Washington as heir-apparent, 254 ; 
his position superior to that of any 
other vice-president, 254 ; his har- 
mony with Jackson, 254, 255 ; ac- 
companies Jackson on New England 
tour, 255 ; his candidacy opposed by 
Wiiite of Tennessee, 25G ; scurri- 
lous biography of, by Crockett, 256 ; 
nominated unanimously for presi- 
dent in 1835, 259 ; letters of Jackson 
in his behalf, 2G2 ; refuses to answer 
questions of Williams luitil after 
close of Congress, 2C4 ; his reply, 
265-2G7 ; condemns distribution of 
surplus, 265 ; courage of this ac- 
tion, 266 ; disapproves of Clay's land 
scheme, 266 ; denies constitutional- 
ity of internal improvements, 266 ; 
affirms opposition to bank, 267 ; 
on Benton's expunging resolutions, 
267 ; his previous letter of accept- 
ance of nomination, 267-269 ; asserts 
freedom from intrigue, 268 ; and in- 
tention to carry out Jackson's prin- 
ciples, 268 ; his early record on sla- 
very, 271 ; supposed to approve of 
anti-slavery attitude of New York 
Democratic papers, 271 ; writes to 
Gwin upon powerlessness of Con- 
gress over slavery in the States, 272 ; 
asserts his opposition to abolition in 



the District of Columbia against 
wish of slave States, 274 ; his attitude 
tlie general one at that time, 275, 
forced to give casting vote for Jack- 
son's bill to prohibit abolition liter- 
ature in mails, 277 ; his reasons for 
so voting, 278 ; not a " doughface," 
278 ; vote for, in 1830, 278-281 ; 
elected by New England and Middle 
States, 280 ; only Democrat to carry 
New England in a contested election 
by popular and electoral vote, 280 ; 
significance of his election, 281 ; tri- 
umphs by good sense without en- 
thusiasm, 281. 

President. His inauguration, 282, 
283; his farewell to Jackson, 283; 
continues Jackson's cabinet, 283 ; 
his inaugural address, 283-286 ; per- 
sonal modesty, 284 ; optimism, 284 ; 
repeats declaration against abolition 
in the District, 285 ; tribute to Jack- 
son, 285 ; rejects Benton's warning 
of a financial panic, 286 ; his relation 
to panic of 1837, 287 ; said to have 
urged Jackson to sign distribution 
bill, 302 ; denoimced by New York 
merchants for specie circular after 
panic has begun, 317 ; refuses to 
modify circular or call a special 
session of Congress, 319 ; visited by 
Biddle, 319 ; obliged by suspension 
of specie payments to call extra ses- 
sion, 321 ; wishes to discourage liasty 
action, 321 ; probably instigates 
meetings to throw blame on banks, 
322 ; and declare for metallic cur- 
rency, 322 ; his statesmanlike be- 
havior during crisis, 325; his mes- 
sage to the extra session, 326-333 ; 
courageously states facts and ap- 
peals to reason, 326, 327 ; points out 
inability of government to cure tlie 
evils, 327 ; indicates real causes of 
inflation, 327, 328 ; opposes renewal 
of a bank, 328, 329 ; urges abandon- 
ment of pet banks, 330 ; suggests in- 
dependent treasury, 331 ; defends 
specie circular and advocates reten- 
tion of surplus installment, 331 ; re* 
states limited powers of government, 
332 ; denounced by Webster, 334 ; 
and others, 336 ; not supported by 



INDEX 



495 



his party in House, 337, 338 ; his 
measures supported by Callioun, 
340, 341 ; supported by Loco-foco 
faction in New York, 344 ; liis mes- 
sage to regular session of Congress, 
345, 34G ; refuses to be influenced 
by Democratic losses in elections, 
345 ; recommends preemption law, 
345; refers to boundary troubles, 
345 ; continues to be denoiaiced by 
Whigs, 34G ; and by Conservative 
Democrats, 347 ; hopes for return of 
prosperity after resumption in 1838, 
349 ; issues neutrality proclamation 
in connection with Canadian insur- 
rection, 354 ; takes measures to pun- 
ish offenses, 355 ; invites Durham to 
visit Washington, 350 ; refuses to 
pardon Mackenzie, 350 ; denounced 
for further warning proclamation, 
857 ; refuses proposed annexation of 
Texas, 358 ; not connected with anti- 
slavery agitation at the time, 359 ; 
urges American claims upon Mexico 
with success, 300 ; otters Navy De- 
partment to Washington Irving, 
301 ; thought to have erred in giving 
it to Paulding, 302 ; letter of Louis 
Napoleon to, 302 ; cheerful tone of 
message to second session of Con- 
gress, 303 ; reaffirms sound financial 
doctrine, 303 ; on Swartwout's de- 
falcation, 304 ; appoints Hoyt to 
succeed him, 304 ; asks for appro- 
priations for Seminole war, 300 ; 
asks Congress for support in north- 
eastern boundary question, 307 ; 
damages Democratic party in Maine 
by his treatment of frontier disputes, 
307 ; revisits New York, enthusiastic 
reception, 307, 308 ; snubbed by 
Whigs, 308, 309 ; partisan character 
of his journey and speeches, 309; 
encouraged by elections of 1839, 
309; in message of 1839 regrets re- 
newed bank failures, 372 ; announces 
economy in government, 372 ; re- 
news attack on banks, 372, 373 ; in- 
sists on inability of government aid 
to help the depression, 374 ; signs 
sub-treasury bill, 377 ; his adminis- 
tration defended by Democratic 
convention, 379 ; writes letters in 



campaign, 380; approves "gag" 
rule in Congress, 380 ; justification of 
his attitude, 381 ; denunciations of 
him by Webster in campaign, 384 ; 
other attacks upon, as aristocrat and 
enemy to people, 385 ; tries to rely 
on past record of party, 380 ; aban- 
doned by various Democratic fac- 
tions, 387 ; .fackson's letter in sup- 
port of, 387 ; how ridiculed by Whigs 
in campaign, 388-390 ; vote for, in 
1840, 390, 391 ; composed under de- 
feat, 391 ; his final message repeats 
his views on bank and sub-treasury, 
392 ; urges prevention of slave trade, 
392 ; alterations in his cabinet, 393, 
394 ; welcomes Harrison to White 
House, 394 ; his conduct as presi- 
dent, economy and elegance, 394, 
395 ; social charm of his administra- 
tion, 395 ; his civility to Adams, 396 ; 
bitter opinion of, held by Adams, 
390 ; tribute of Clay to, 390, 397. 

In Retirement — Candidate for 
Renomination. Return to New York 
and Kinderhook, 398 ; his estate, 
398 ; remains leading single figure 
in partj', 399 ; continues to have 
ambition for reelection, 399 ; practi- 
cally admits this in 1841, 399, 400; 
joinney through South, 400 ; visits 
Jackson and Clay, 400 ; writes long 
letters on public questions, 400 ; 
views on low tariff, 401 ; promises 
fidelity to Democratic party, 401 ; 
attends funeral of Harrison, 401 ; 
his renomination considered certain 
until 1844, 401 ; only prevented by 
Texas question, 402 ; his record on 

slavery a colorless one up to 1844, 

403 ; not subservient to South, 403 ; 
defense of his vote on abolition cir- 
culars in mail, and of his opinion on 
" gag " rule, 404 ; suspected by South 
of hostility to annexation of Texas, 

404 ; majority of delegates to na- 
tional convention instructed for, 
404 ; asked for a distinct statement 
on Texas, 405 ; writes continuing to 
oppose annexation policy, 405 ; his 
reasons, 405, 400 ; willing to yield tc 
a demand on part of Congress, 400 ; 
courage of this open avowal, 407 



496 



INDEX 



endeavor of Jackson to help Van 
Buren's candidacy, 407 ; his pre- 
vious nominations by two-thirds 
rule used as precedents in conven- 
tion, 408 ; his nomination prevented 
by the rule, 409-411 ; keeps promise 
to support Polk, 412 ; urges Wright 
to accept nomination for governor- 
ship of New York, 412 : saves Xew 
York for Democrats, 413 ; the first 
victim of the slave power, 414 ; 
complimented by convention, 414 ; 
outwardly placid, but secretly em- 
bittered by failure to secure nomi- 
nation, 414. 

Free-soil Leader. His followers 
form the Barnburner wing of De- 
mocrats, 415, 41 G ; alienated from 
Polk's administration, 417 ; sympa- 
thizes with secession of Barnburners 
in 1847, 419, 420 ; revives anti-slavery 
feelings, 420 ; angered at proscrip- 
tion of his friends by Polk, 420 ; de- 
clares an end of his political ambi- 
tions, 420, 421 ; refuses to commit 
himself as to origin of Mexican war, 
421 ; aids in composing Barnburner 
address of 1847, 424 ; his letter 
to Utica convention, 425-427 ; de- 
nounces Democratic national con- 
vention, 425 ; asserts power of Con- 
gress over Territories, 420 ; refuses 
to vote for Cass or Taylor, 42G ; 
nominated for president, 427 ; at 
Buffalo convention nominated by 
Free-soil party, 428 ; his letter 
urging exclusion of slavery from 
Territories, 429 : rage of Democratic 
party with, 43'^ ; fails to secure sup- 
port of anti-slavery Whigs, 431 ; 
vote for, in 1848, 431, 432; leads 
Cass in New York, 431 ; does not 
probably expect to be elected, 432 ; 
his candidacy not an act of revenge, 
433 ; undoubtedly sincere in his ad- 
vocacy of Free-soil principles, 433 ; 
ends political career, 433. 

In Retirement. His career up to 
1848 logical and creditable, 434 ; 
had he died then, his reputation 
would stand higher, 434 ; separated 
bej'ond hope from his party, 434 ; 
until 1850 sympathizes with Free- 



soilers, 435 ; accepts finality of 
compromise of 1850,436; his justi- 
fication, love of Union and dread of 
ruin, 430 ; stands with majority of 
Northern statesmen, 438 ; not to be 
condemned more than Clay or Web- 
ster, 439 ; writes letter favoring 
Pierce in 1852, 430 ; visits Europe, 
440 ; declines position as arbitrator 
upon British-American claims com- 
mission, 440 ; votes for Buchanan in 
1S5G, 441 ; expects squatter sover- 
eignty to succeed, 441 ; his distrust 
of Republican party, 441, 442; let- 
ter in behalf of Buchanan, 442-444 ; 
its cheerless tone, 442 ; rehearses 
history of Democratic party, 443 ; 
laments repeal of Missouri Compro- 
mise, 443 ; hopes question of slavery 
in Territories may be settled peace- 
ably, 443 ; asserts power of Con- 
gress over Territories, 444 ; thinks 
Buchanan can save Union, 444 ; un- 
pardoned by South, 444 ; votes 
against Lincoln in 18G0, 445; char- 
acter of his retirement, 445 ; writes 
autobiogi'aphical sketch, 44G ; his 
history of American parties, 44G ; 
condemns Buchanan for accepting 
Dred Scott decision, 440 ; sympa- 
thizes with North in civil war, 447 ; 
expresses confidence in Lincoln, 
447 ; last illness and death, 447 ; hit 
funeral, 448. 
Character and Place in History. 
His personal appearance, 449 ; ele- 
gance, 450 ; his country life, thrift, 
and fortune, 450 ; pecuniary integ- 
rity, 450 } his polished manners, 451 ; 
called insincere by Adams, 451 ; his 
fairness and personal friendliness to 
opponents, 452 ; his skill in reading 
and managing men, 452, 453 ; not 
stilted, yet free from dissipation, 
453 : social agreeableness, 454 ; ficti- 
tious stories of his cunning, 454 ; 
his friendships, 454-45G ; these the 
true test of his sincerity, 45G ; his 
placidity under abuse thought hy- 
pocritical by opponents, 457 ; his 
caution in political papers, 457 ; 
his popularity in New York, 458 ; 
his true democracy, 458 ; creed ol 



INDEX 



497 



his followers, 45'J ; lack of enthusi- 
asm prevents his being a popular 
hero, 459 ; always follows principles 
of Jeft'erson, 4G0 ; his fame dimmed 
by spoils system, 4G0 ; yet his atti- 
tude in respect to it not a discred- 
itable one, 4G1; his courage a 
marked quality, 461, 462 ; his prolix- 
ity and politeness obscure his clear 
statements of opuiion, 462 ; does 
not belong among mediocrities of 
the White House, 463 ; his eminence 
as a real leader, 463 ; superior to 
Jackson in wisdom, 463 ; and to 
John Adams in party leadersliip, 

464 ; stands with Madison and Jolm 
Quincy Adams, 464 ; comparison 
with Madison, 464; with Adams, 

465 ; comparison with Webster and 
Clay, 465; superior to either in 
party leadership, 465 ; summary 
and review of his career, 465, 466 ; 
his fidelity to principle throughout, 
466, 467. 

Personal Traits. General esti- 
mate of, 3, 462-466 ; betting habits, 
453; bitterness, lack of, 123, 152, 
163, 223, 420, 452 ; cheerfulness, 
114, 453 ; conservatism, 186, 436 ; 
courage, 87, 183, 195, 215, 266, 325, 
407, 436, 461-463; diplomatic abil- 
ity, 221, 222 ; education, 15-17, 22 ; 
friendships, 454-456 ; imperturba- 
bility, 228, 253, 391, 396, 414, 445, 
451, 456; integrity, 194, 268, 450, 
456 ; legal ability, 17-21, 25, 29, 30, 
31 ; magnetism, lack of, 281, 459; 
manners, 4, 15, 18, 72, 206, 394, 395, 
451 ; modesty, 243, 268, 284 ; non- 
committalism, 79, 147, 151, 265, 
380,400, 421, 461; oratory, 27, 31, 
32, 61, 78, 87, 150, 457; personal 
appearance, 1, 449, 450; private 
life, 37, 453 ; political leadership, 
58, 61, 69, 76, 87, 117-119, 131, 150, 
153, 157, 179, 180, 431, 452, 454; 
scrupulousness, 68, 194, 195, 278; 
shrewdness, 197, 207, 224, 229, 369, 
452-454 ; sincerity, 430, 431 ; social 
qualities, 394, 395, 396, 397, 400, 
450 ; subserviency, alleged, to South, 
403, 404. 439 ; unfavorable views of, 
158, 196, 223, 230, 231, 244, 256, 



325 n., 384, 385, .396, 406, 451, 456; 
unpopularity in later years, .), 444, 
458. 

Political Opinions. Bank of Uni- 
ted States, 145, 244, 250, 251, 267, 
328, 329, 345, 363, 373, 391 ; bank- 
ing, 169, 170, 372, 373 ; Barnburn- 
ers, 419, 425, 429; British West 
India trade, 141,219-222; Canadian 
rebellion, 354 ; compromise of 18.50, 
436 ; conscription, 62 ; Democratic 
party, 145, 147, 242, 443, 446 ; debt, 
imprisonment for, 26, 27, 98, 116, 

142 ; Dred Scott decision, 446, 447 ; 
election of 1820, 75 ; election of 
1824, 115, 116; election of 1828, 
173; election of 1840, 400; elec- 
tion of 1848, 425 ; elections, reform 
of, 170, 171 ; embargo, 59 ; Erie 
Canal, 65, 66 ; expunging resolu- 
tions, 267; Federalists, 70, 127, 152 ; 
gag rule, 380, 381 ; independent 
treasurj-, 330, 331, 377 ; internal 
improvements, 95, 96, 97, 98, 117, 
132, 133, 142, 168, 244, 266: Jefter- 
sonian principles, 3, 4, 12, 39, 40, 
145, 147, 171, 249, 284, 329, 332, 
458-460 ; judiciary, 83, 84, 85, 134- 
137, 141, 142 ; Kansas question, 
442-444 ; legislative instructions, 

143 ; Maine boundary, 367 ; Mex- 
ican claims, 359, 360 ; Mexican war, 
421 ; Missouri Compromise, 73, 74, 
443; naval academy, 140 ; nullifica- 
tion, 244 ; office, appointments to, 
81, 82, 137-139, 173, 364; Panama 
congress, 127-129. 141 ; panic of 
1837, 327, 328, 345; party alle- 
giance, 43, 59, 70-72, 175, 401, 414, 
420, 426, 432 ; preemption law, 345 ; 
presidential ambition, 193, 223, 242, 
2.54, 278, 399, 400, 40.5-407, 430, 433 ; 
Republican party of 1856, 441, 442 ; 
slave trade, 392 ; slavery, 74, 93, 
271, 277, 278, 285, 380, 403, 420,426, 
436 ; slavery in Territories, 426, 429, 
436, 441, 444; States' rights, 97, 
172 ; specie circular, 319, 331 ; spoils 
system. 53, 54, 57, 75, 173-175, 207, 
209, 210, 214, 215, 233, 460; suf- 
frage, basis of, 79, 80; suffrage, 
negro, 80, 81 : surplus, distribution 
of, 265; tariff, 99, 102, 103, 140 



498 



INDEX 



142, 143, 243, 249, 401 ; war of 1812, 
50 ; war of rebelliou, 447. 

Van Dyke, , votes for Panama 

congress, 131. 

Van Ness, William P., studies of Van 
Buren with, 17 ; his career at the 
bar, 17 ; friendship with Burr, 17 ; 
attacks Clintons and Livingstons in 
Burr's interest, 43 ; his residence 
bought by Van Buren, 398. 

Van Ness, William W., competitor 
of Van Buren at bar, 20. 

Van Rensselaer, Jacob R., at Colum- 
bia County bar, 20. 

V^an Rensselaer, , commands a fili- 
bustering expedition against Can- 
ada, 353. 

Van Rensselaer family, gains political 
influence through landed wealth, 
33. 

Van Vechten, Abraham, succeeded 
by Van Buren as attorney-general, 
23; removed by Republicans, 63. 

Virginia, Democrats of, refuse to sup- 
port Johnson for vice-presidency, 
259, 260. 

Von Hoist, H. C, praises bearing of 
Van Buren during panic, 32.") ; his 
unhistorical view of Van Buren, 
325 n., 40G n. 

Walker, Robert J. , leads annexation- 
ists in Democratic convention of 
1844, 408 ; induces convention to 
adopt two-thirds rule, 408, 409 ; pro- 
tests against New York Democrats, 
409. 

^ar of 1812, Republican opposition 
to, 58, 59 ; causes of, 59. 

^Vard, Rev. Thomas, at Buffalo con- 
vention, 427. 

Washington, George, character of his 
presidential administration, 5, 6 ; 
his prestige aids Federalists, 38 ; 
refuses to appoint political oppo- 
nents to office, 4G : his recall of 
Monroe, 89 : appealed to by Van 
Buren as authority against Adams's 
foreign policy. 126-129 : leaves of- 
fice with popularity, 282 ; best of 
American presidents, 464. 

Watkins, Tobias, his removal from 
office, 212. 



Webb, James Watson, abandons Jack* 
son in 1832, 247. 

Webster, Daniel, compared with Van 
Buren as lawyer, 32 ; not in Con- 
gress in 1821, 94; against tariff of 
1824, 100 ; on Panama congress, 
130 ; inferior to Van Buren as par- 
liamentary leader, 150 ; on Jack- 
son's manners, 156 ; on Van Bu- 
ren' s prominence in 1829, 179 ; his 
debate with Hayne, 188 ; votes to 
reject Van Buren's nomination as 
minister to England, 230 ; condemns 
him for un-American conduct, 231 ; 
exn,ggerates results of removal of 
deposits, 252 ; supported for presi- 
dency by Massachusetts Whigs, 260 ; 
condemns bill to exclude anti-sla- 
very matter from mails, 276 ; vote 
for, in election of 1836, 280 ; urges 
extension of pet bank system, 299 : 
later condemns this policy, 300 ; 
approves bill to distribute surplus, 
300 ; denounces Van Buren for caus- 
ing panic, 333 ; resists attempt to sus- 
pend depositing surplus, 334, 338 ; 
ridicules possibilit)' of resumption 
without government aid, .'u55 : votes 
for treasury notes, 339 ; votes for 
preemption bill, 357 ; his speeches 
in campaign of 1840, 383, 384 ; his 
denunciations of Van Buren, 383, 
384 ; on Van Buren's vote for the 
bill to exclude abolition matter from 
mails. 404 ; indignant at Taylor's 
nomination, 430 ; his comment on 
Van Buren's Free-soil candidacy, 
431 ; forfeits fame by support of 
compromise, 435 ; his motives, 
437 ; compared with Van Buren, 
465. 

Weed, Thurlow, on rotation in office, 
67 ; praises Albany Regency, 112 ; 
leader of Anti-Masonic party, 245 ; 
manager of New York Whigs, 363 ; 
prevents nomination of Clay in 1840, 
378. 

Wellington, Duke of, his position in 
1832, 227. 

West, favors tariff of 1828, 143; op- 
poses Van Buren in 1836, 280; de. 
velopment of, after 1820, 288-290; 
land hunger in, 289, 294, 309. 



INDEX 



499 



V^Testervelt, Dr. , appointed to 

office by Van Bureu, 173; his 
" claiius," 174. 

W^liigs, iu New York, coalesce with 
Anti-Masous, 245 ; nominate Clay, 
24G; their Young Men's conven- 
tion nominates Clay, 'J4G ; nomi- 
nate Harrison and Granger in 1836, 
260 ; their policy in attacking Jack- 
son, 2G3 ; their real platform in 
Harrison's letter to Sherrod Wil- 
liams, 2G4; their refusal to reduce 
taxation increases speculation, 299 ; 
and their advocacy of distribution, 
300, 301 ; rave against Van Buren 
as author of crisis of 1837, 321, 322, 
333 ; demand bank, 334-337 ; de- 
maud payment of fourth installment 
of surplus, 338 ; gain in election of 
1837, 337, 342 ; in New York, aided 
by Loco-focos, 344; transfer name 
Loco-foco to whole Democratic 
party, 345; aided by conservative 
Democrats, 347 ; repeal sub-trea- 
sury, 348 ; refuse to join popular 
receptions of Van Buren, 308 ; en- 
deavor to force New Jersey con- 
gressmen upon House, 377 ; nomi- 
nate Harrison and Tyler, 377, 378 ; 
do not adopt a platform, 378 ; tlieir 
policy in election of 1840, 382-3SG, 
388-390 ; campaign songs, 389 ; elect 
Harrison, 350, 391 ; their difficulties 
with Tyler, 401, 402; defeated in 
1844, 412, 413; support Wilmot 
Proviso, 417, 418 ; nominate Taylor 
and reject resolution against slavery 
extension, 430 ; anti-slavery mem- 
bers refuse to support Van Buren, 
431 ; elect Taylor, 432 ; accept com- 
promise of 1850, 435; nominate 
Scott in 1852, 439; support Fill- 
more in 1856, 445. 

SVhite, Hugh L., heads secession from 
Democratic party, 25G, 2G0 ; reasons 
for his candidacy for presidency, 
256, 257 ; votes for bill to exclude 
anti-slavery matter from mail, 277 ; 
vote for, 279, 280. 



"Wilkins, William, receives electoral 
vote of Pennsylvania in 1832 for 
vice-president, 248. 

William IV., character of his court, 
227 ; comphments Jackson to Van 
Buren, 229. 

Wilmot, David, offers anti-slavery 
proviso to three-million bill, 41G, 
417 ; at Barnburner convention, 
419. 

Wilmot Proviso, origin of Republican 
party and civil war, 41G ; becomes 
a party question, 417, 418; discus- 
sion of its necessity in New Mexico 
and California, 418 ; abandoned by 
Republicans in 18G1, 438. 

Wirt, William, Anti-Masonic candi- 
date for presidency, 1G7, 245, 248. 

Williams, Elisha, his prominence at 
Columbia County bar, 20; his ri- 
valry with Van Buren, 20, 21. 

Williams, Sherrod, asks questions of 
presidential candidates in 183G, 264 ; 
calls Van Buren's reasons for delay 
"unsatisfactory," 265. 

Woodbury, Levi, votes against Pan- 
ama congress, 131 ; secretary of 
navy, 199; secretary of treasury 
under Van Buren, 283. 

Wright, Silas, member of Albany Re- 
gency, 111; votes for bill to ex- 
clude abolition matter from mail, 
277 ; votes against distribution of 
surplus, 301 ; leads administration 
senators, 34] ; declines nomination 
for vice-presidency, 411 ; accepts 
nomination for governor of New 
York, 412; elected, 413; votes 
aeainst Texas treaty, 413; leads 
Barnburners, 415 ; offered Trea- 
sury Department by Polk, 41G; de- 
feated for reelection by Hunker op- 
position, 417 ; his friendship for 
Van Buren, 456. 

Young, Samuel, denounces Calhoun 
for raising Texas question, 410; 
presides over Utica convention of 
1848, 425. 



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